I look at as part of the Rebellion, not post. I am thinking of the development of canals & the rail lines, roads and regional cities.
My thoughts point to the cotton gin and the stern wheeler, along with the development of the Erie Canal and subsequent rail (and paved) roads, which follow them. Also, I think of the tit for tat of the Compromise of 1850 as just one more example of the back & forth in American politics that continues to this day. People were fed up with
This war was and is about who gets to make money off goods and how much they get to make. I think that included sources of cheap labor. I think Northerners wanted and encouraged the thought that freed slaves would be willing, cheap labor for canal and rail lines. To call slaves ‘free’ was just lip service.
My opinion anyway.
Pal, you've got some odd ideas rattling around in your brain.
Let's see if I can help clarify:
First of all, before the 1860 election, only a small minority of Northerners were truly anti-slavery.
The rest were happy to vote for the pro-slavery Democrats or "Dough-faced" & "moderate" Whigs.
Even in 1860, 60% of the US electorate voted for pro-slavery parties.
Only 40% voted for the anti-Slavery Republicans.
But how did even 40% vote Republican?
Did they somehow suddenly desire "cheap labor for canal and rail lines"?
No.
It was books like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the execution of John Brown at Harper's Ferry that galvanized America's conscience.
It was also the Sunday sermons in thousands of Northern churches over many years, even decades, which slowly, slowly focused Northern attention on the indefensible moral status of slavery.
Were politics involved?
Of course -- after all, Lincoln was a former railroad lawyer who promised Federal aid to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
But this had nothing to do with slavery, or the South.
Finally, it was the South -- not the North -- which seceded and which began shooting, so it's the South's motivations which matter.
That is especially so since Lincoln, along with most "moderate" Northerners, was fully prepared for slavery to continue, and die a natural death long term -- provided slavery was not allowed to expand into non-slave territories and states.
So why did the South secede?
Answer: because they could not tolerate the idea that slavery would become a dieing institution.
And the South's reasons were not just sentimenal longings to preserve their antebellum life-styles.
The immediate, focused reason was: only by expanding the territories, states and even other countries for legal slavery could the demand for, and therefore the prices of slaves be kept high and growing.
That's what the Civil War was all about.
The rest is just, well, blather.