From what I recall, the entire value of all the slaves was around 5 billion in 1860 dollars. You think this was more than all the railroads and textile mills in the North put together?
CSA Constitution had no fewer than THREE radical clasuses protecting slavery even if states (oh, remember “state’s rights”) voted to prohibit slavery.
The US constitution had one clause protecting slavery (Article IV, section 2.) and Lincoln was doing what he could to add an amendment that would protect it even further. "Corwin Amendment."
So the theory that the war was about slavery is contradicted by the fact of the Union offering perpetual slavery.
Yes, it was about $1b more than all textile mills and rrs put together. The top 11 states by wealth, the Confederacy had 10 of them, all due to slaves & land. Had almost no patents coming out of the entire South for 30 years.
From the Union’s perspective it wasn’t. From the Southern perspective, that’s all it was about, especially SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES.
Lincoln could say this because if slavery was confined to the south, it would die. Like communism, it had to expand to survive. IT was all about the territories, because everyone knew, sooner or later, a human was either a human everywhere, or a human no where. If he was a piece of property, as Justice Taney correctly argued, he was not human.