[Colonel Kangaroo]

So if the war was just about slavery, why did the North wait until after Gettysburg to free the slaves, and then only the slaves in the South? Could it be that there was more to the CW than slavery?

You are right about the war. The war, especially at the first, was not all about slavery. But the first wave secessions that triggered the whole affair were almost 100% over slavery.

[paladin1_dcs]

Are you sure about that? After all, while the richer Southerners may have owned slaves, the vast majority of Southerners did not own slaves. Those majorities made up the armies that the North eventually crushed when they invaded the South. I’m sorry, but men don’t fight and die for something that doesn’t concern them, and slavery didn’t concern the majority of the South despite the efforts to revise our history. Their fight was over the rights of the States to determine their own future.

[wagglebee]

But the first wave secessions that triggered the whole affair were almost 100% over slavery.

Correct and anyone who doubts that should read the South Carolina Secession Declaration where slavery is specifically mentioned eighteen times.

From a constitutional standpoint, the Confederacy's problem was that it never addressed the Articles of Confederation which speaks of a PERPETUAL Union, a Union that the Constitution sought to make "more perfect."