They died in the war that freed the slaves or made freedom for slaves possible. That means that in effect they did die to free slaves.
They died to make more people slaves of Washington DC.
The usual B.S.
When the Union armies invaded the South for the first time, they had no intention of doing anything at all about slavery. They intended to keep it in place exactly as it was.
They weren't trying to get rid of slavery, but that doesn't meant that "they intended to keep it in place exactly as it was."
The soldiers weren't thinking about it one way or the other. Not being abolitionists, though, didn't mean they wanted to keep slavery going.
It was a time of change for the country and what would come out in the end wasn't clear, but not having a plan to get rid of slavery didn't mean that they would have liked to see it continue or would exert themselves to keep it in place exactly as it was. That was what the other side wanted.
And too often does that get substituted for the real reason they invaded and killed people. Let us not forget that the real reason they invaded other people and killed them was to reestablish despotic Washington DC control over those people's lives.
The Southern states were paying by far the bulk of all the taxes to fund Washington DC. They were getting precious little in return for that money, but it was making people in New York and Washington DC fabulously wealthy.
This was a precursor of the exact same corrupt structure we have in Washington DC today.
And if anyone is being honest, freedom for slaves was completely impossible without violating the actual constitutional laws of that era. Declaring the Southern states "Insurrectionists" gave them the extra-legal powers to violate real constitutional law.
They weren't trying to get rid of slavery, but that doesn't meant that "they intended to keep it in place exactly as it was."
By "They", you mean Lincoln, and yes, Lincoln was intent on keeping everything exactly the way it was. He not only said so on numerous occasions, he supported the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which explicitly stated that everything regarding the slaves would be kept exactly as it was.
The soldiers weren't thinking about it one way or the other. Not being abolitionists, though, didn't mean they wanted to keep slavery going.
And I think this is probably accurate. Except for the nutburgers out of Massachusetts, most people didn't give a sh*t about slavery in the Southern states.
Probably the majority of northern soldiers had a dim view of it, but stamping it out was certainly not their motivation.
It was a time of change for the country and what would come out in the end wasn't clear, but not having a plan to get rid of slavery didn't mean that they would have liked to see it continue or would exert themselves to keep it in place exactly as it was.
I think this is correct.
That was what the other side wanted.
I'm pretty sure the other side simply want to continue living their lives as they had always done without other people telling them how to live, or capturing most of their money through their control of the Congress making laws which favored the Northern states.
And by "Other Side" I meant the non slaves. The slaves of course wanted to be free, but when the war began, neither side recognized their right to be free, and neither side hand any intention of doing so for the foreseeable future.