Perhaps not initially, but we do know that the south's war was to perpetuate and expand the institution of slavery.
[Thee] Perhaps not initially, but we do know that the south's war was to perpetuate and expand the institution of slavery.
Actually, no. The South attempted to do that from 1850 until the election of Lincoln. Then the Southern States left the Union, abandoning (as far as I can tell) the Territories whose slavery status had been in dispute. As far as I can tell, only Missouri and New Mexico were fought-over by the Confederacy. They made a weak attempt to organize a Confederate territorial government in Arizona but failed. Missouri had been a slave State, but its government was removed by Abraham Lincoln through surrogates mounting a coup d'etat in the name of "loyalty to the Union" (as if Missouri owed that, when Missouri was being maltreated along with the rest of the Southern States) and turned into a battlefield.
Southerners wanted the same rights everyone else had, to migrate west and take their property, their slaves, with them. Whereas Lincoln wanted the Territories for his constituents, exclusively. Not only did Lincoln and the other Free Soil enthusiasts not want slaves in the Territories, but they didn't want Southerners either -- because Southerners didn't have their mahnds raaht on the subject of slavery, and might vote wrong if the matter were put to a vote under "popular sovereignty" doctrines.
That's what the Jayhawkers and Potawatomie Creek were about. The Free Soilers and John Brown didn't kill slaves, they killed Southerners.
As the saying goes, "There it is."