Of course you think that. But of course, the people concerned -- Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth -- didn't think so. They actively encouraged African-Americans to fight. They weren't trying to give out or withhold brownie points for moral purity. They were out for freedom and willing to take support wherever it came from.
You could draw a parallel to the Second World War. Americans fought in the war or supported the war for different reasons. But would you really opt out or condemn or subvert the war effort because some of us weren't entirely pure in our motivation by 21st century standards?
My observation is that all the upheaval had nothing to do with what was in the best interest of black people, and any subsequent concern was an afterthought, and I suspect entirely based on political advantage.
That is how we get people saying stuff like "Once some people were slaves. Now everyone is a slave. Lincoln made us all slaves." They don't take slavery seriously, so they think everything they don't like is like slavery or worse than slavery.
First of all, if you cared about slavery, you'd know that it involved more than just having to pay taxes. Secondly, if we are less free now than we once were (and a lot depends on how you define "we"), the settling of the frontier and the introduction of the income tax in the Progressive Era (and withholding during the FDR years) has more to do it than the Civil War. Third, wouldn't be any freer if the Confederates had won. They were a government like any other (if not worse than many) and they had an interest in maintaining and increasing their power over their subjects.
My primary concern at that time was the possibility of being incinerated by Soviet Nuclear ICBMs (for Obvious reasons growing up next to a US Military base) and my secondary concerns were things like Taxes and the effort of government to undermine civil society through abortion, the normalization of homosexuality, and assaults against the culture such as banning prayer in schools and such.
The Soviet threat and gay marriage? Were you in high school for twenty years or something?
P.S. Give my regards to your imaginary Black friend.
The last time we had any long conversations was 2008. (He has moved a long way away.) His wife was a big Obama supporter and I was unabashedly Pro-McCain. (though i've since had reasons to regret that)
He was pro Obama also, but he knew how I was, and he understood that I wasn't going to support the Democrat. His wife kept trying to convince me that Obama was awesome or something.
I think his long friendship with me steered him more to the libertarian side. I took him shooting one day, and he turned into a gun nut. I had been steadily advocating conservative ideas to him since I met him. Some he agreed with, and others he rejected.
He knew I wasn't going to support any Democrat, and he could disagree with my position and still respect me for holding it because I had always been that way. We had lots of grand arguments.
But getting back to the Nuclear missiles and gay marriage, I had been warning him about the normalization of Homosexuality since the late 1970s. He used to think I was just nuts, that no such thing would ever happen. Back around 2003 or so, I went to stay with him a couple of days (he had moved several hundred miles away) and he told me that I had been right about every single thing I had warned him about.
So yes, the conversation had spanned several decades.
P.S. Give my regards to your imaginary Black friend.
There you go with the ad hominem stuff again.
I have never disputed that slavery was wrong and should never have been practiced in this country, but it wasn't the central motivation for starting the civil war.
If Lincoln is to be believed, his motivation was a belief that the states were under some obligation to remain under his control. That like the hotel California, they could checkout any time they want, but they could never leave.
The idea that states were obligated to remain permanently attached to people whom they wished to be rid of, was debated at the time. Many believed a Union voluntarily joined could be voluntarily left. Others believed that independence, once surrendered, was permanently forfeit.
Lincoln singlehandedly imposed his view on everyone else.
And the disposition of slavery got tossed in there near the middle of the war.