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It wasn’t over slavery the last time either. That is just useful propaganda created to justify the invasion of states.

I’m going to disagree with you here. Of course it was over slavery. Lincoln did not even appear on the ballot in the slave states (sound familiar?) Virtually all of the politics of the 1850s was over slavery. Southerners were afraid that the new Republican party was going to restrict slavery. There was no Constitutional way to end slavery in South short of Constitutional amendment which of course the south would never agree too.

Lincoln couldn’t say the war was over slavery because he had no legal way to achieve that end, so for the first half of the war the goal was to preserve the Union. For the first part of the war the army was ordered to return runaway slaves to their owners. Lincoln then seized on the idea that the slaves were helping the southern war effort and could legally be declared ‘contraband’ and not returned to their owners. From that, Lincoln moved to the Emancipation Proclamation which carefully excluded slaves in states that hadn’t seceded (MO, MD, KY, DE) and areas under Union control (parts of TN & LA).

Bottom line, whatever might be said, the Civil War was all about slavery. The parallels with the abortion debate are striking. At the same time that you have states (NY & VA) guaranteeing abortion up to the moment of birth (and perhaps a bit after) and lighting up buildings celebrating the fact, you have other states banning the procedure in hopes of reversing a SCOTUS decision which discovered the “right” hiding in a penumbra of a right to privacy.

Lincoln couldn’t say the war was over slavery because he had no legal way to achieve that end,

Based on his actions, he clearly had no intention of achieving that end when he started the war.

The Ghost Amendment that Haunts Lincoln's Legacy.

Bottom line, whatever might be said, the Civil War was all about slavery.

If it was all about slavery, why was Lincoln trying to give them all the protection for slavery they could possibly want?

If it was all about slavery, why didn't they take the deal?

The civil War was not about slavery. The south seceded when it realized that it would a permanent political minority.

Lincoln switched from maintaining the union as a war goal to abolishing slavery because of the appalling casualties. He needed a moral reason to justify the massive amount of deaths.

‘Of course it was over slavery.’

what really sparked it was the slave states getting their panties in a wad because the free states exercised their states’ rights and refused to abide by the Fugitive Slave Act arising from the disastrous Compromise of 1850...that’s why I get such a kick out of the confeds today crying ‘states rights, states rights...’