Since the war was fought over the money and trade that was produced through slavery, then no, without the slavery, there would have been no money for Northern powers to fight over, but then also, the Northern powers would have never gotten so strong without that same slavery.
Slavery was funneling 200-230 million dollars per year through the port of New York in 1860 dollars. It created about 73% of all US Trade with Europe, and it was by far the number one employer of North Eastern based shipping companies, and it's effects were felt in banking, insurance, warehousing, and many other industries in the North East.
The threat posed to the North East robber barons was that of taking away the vast majority of the European trade from New York, and sending it South. It would have resulted in the shifting of that 230 million that New York was receiving from Southern trade (With Washington getting it's 65 million or so per year cut) to Southern ports.
To make it simple, the 1860 counterparts of the same class of very powerful northern elites who control the media and Washington DC today, would have been economically ruined by Southern states taking over control of their own export/import economy.
These same Northern elites would have been further damaged economically by the Southern states allowing superior and cheaper European goods to be landed in the South, and distributed among all avenues of commerce (such as the Mississippi river) to other states, thereby displacing their own products in the markets they were currently serving in the Midwest and border states.
Southern independence was a *HUGE* threat to the existing monied classes which had gained control of Washington DC.
People nowadays are simply unaware of the massive economic threat an independent South posed to the wealthy northern elite of the 1860s.
This is why supposed anti-slavery crusader Abraham Lincoln was urging the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which would have made it virtually impossible to abolish slavery. They believed that slavery was the cause of separation, and were willing to give the Southern states every conceivable assurance that the slavery economy of the South would not be undermined by Washington DC, so long as the economic control of the Southern export engine would remain in the hands of New York and Washington DC.
The war was all about protecting the economic interests of the wealthy influence cartel then controlling Washington DC, and who are still effectively the main force Conservative America is fighting today.
Excellent treatise. These are the very points I have made to my fellow reenactors in the past.
I wounder subsequently if the Americas would have had the will or power to execute the revolution and decouple from England without the wealth that slavery provided the North and the South?