‘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...’
The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, now also sold as a moral measure by the sainted Lincoln, in fact freed not a single slave. It applied only in the Southern states, where it was intended to ignite a revolt.
Lincoln himself said, in letter after letter after document after speech and before Congress, over and over and over, that he would not oppose slavery in the South if only it would come back to the Union, and–yes, boys and girls–he wanted to send blacks back to Africa.
IN fact, the North wanted no blacks of any kind, having discovered that sweating European immigrants was more profitable. If you own slaves, you have to feed them and care for them no matter the business climate. This was suited to an agricultural economy. But the North was industrial. It made more sense to pay helpless immigrants almost nothing while they lived in tubercular filth with their children working twelve hours a day and dying of preventable diseases. After all, the next ship in would bring more. In short, it was the moral equivalent of slavery but more cost-effective and without the stigma.