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As I said, you can cherry pick or select documents that prove any point of view in this regard. (See below.) Thanks for proving me right.

I also noticed that you failed to answer my questions and that you switched from arguing that slavery was the cause to slavery was the main cause.

In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.

Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.

On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states:

Resolved: . . . That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.

I dare say the writer was right, as was I. Lincoln's war "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. That, my friend, is the undeniable truth. And thank you Mr. Lincoln.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union

And what's wrong with that?

I dare say the writer was right, as was I. Lincoln's war "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states. That, my friend, is the undeniable truth. And thank you Mr. Lincoln.

There may have always been a few that maintained that the states were sovereign, but there is also a long tradition of those who held Lincoln's view-Lincoln did not originate this. From James Monroe's first inauguration address:

"Under this Constitution our commerce has been wisely regulated with foreign nations and between the States; new States have been admitted into our Union; our territory has been enlarged by fair and honorable treaty, and with great advantage to the original States; the States, respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power, a just proportion of the sovereignty, have improved their police..."

A just proportion of sovereignty within separate spheres is not the absolute sovereignty claimed by the secessionists. Monroe and Lincoln held the same position on this.