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Correct. The young men being sent South to die weren't the children of rich industrialists,

And that is exactly correct. Neither were they the rich industrialists themselves. The War came with a built in wealthy exclusion fee of $300.00 so that these people could not be drafted as were the ordinary man who would be forced to fight on their behalf.

and they weren't thinking about the economic advantages that the magnates were trying to preserve or expand.

I dare say the average man on the street did not know of such things. What he knew is that the Federal Government was ordering him to report for military service to go do the bidding of the Federal Government. It was unbeknownst to him that the Federal Government was doing the bidding of the Wealthy and Influential Robber Barons of the New York/New England region to rescue their pocketbooks from the efforts by the South to break away from their economic control

But like I said, the average man on the street knew nothing of such things. For him it was simple. Pick up a gun, or go to prison.

They were decent, everyday Americans who were making incredible sacrifices for what they saw as a righteous cause.

I am sure they thought that staying out of prison was a *VERY* righteous cause.

Of course that double standard for the Wealthy caused one of the worst riots in US History. The rioters argued that their lives were worth less than slaves. Slaves were costing about $1,000.00 at the time, and the rich could buy out of the war for a mere $300.00. Since most of these poor men couldn't afford that $300.00, their lives were indeed worth less than the price of a slave.

Thanks to its status as the business capital of the United States, New York City was a deeply divided city at the start of the Civil War in April 1861. Its merchants and financial institutions were loath to lose their southern business and the city’s then-mayor, Fernando Wood, had called for the city to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, to the city’s poorer citizens, the war increasingly came to be seen as benefitting only the rich, as the coffers of the city’s elites filled with the financial spoils of battle and the conflict became known as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s battle.” The passage of the nation’s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow men (presumably only the wealthy) to buy their way out of military service by paying a commutation fee of $300 (more than $5,500 in today’s money), it also exempted blacks from the draft, as they were not yet considered American citizens. Opposition to the draft was widespread across the North, and in New York, some of the loudest critics of the bill could be found in city government, as politicians (primarily Democratic) railed against the legality of the bill and its impact on the city’s working class poor.

Apparently they didn't see the value of this "righteous cause" for which they were being forced to spend their lives if they couldn't come up with $300.00.

What degeneratelamp neglects to share is that the same conditions held sway in the south. Slaveholders with 20 or more slaves were eligible for an exemption as well as the rich being afforded the opportunity to buy tehir way out of service. The “robber Baron” slavocracy of the south ran everything just as the industrialists of the north did within their region.

Seems like a pretty pitiful point when it applies equally to both sides...

The War came with a built in wealthy exclusion fee of $300.00 so that these people could not be drafted as were the ordinary man who would be forced to fight on their behalf.

Three hundred dollars? Pikers! The Confederate Conscription law set the price for substitutes at $3000 in specie, and a lot more in the worthless Confederate currency. Link.

But like I said, the average man on the street knew nothing of such things. For him it was simple. Pick up a gun, or go to prison.

That was true, North or South.

Thought you would like the data from this source. Parens are mine.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21537/21537-h/21537-h.htm#CHAPTER_X

Expansion and Conflict by William E. Dodd

Her (the port of New York) tonnage had increased from a little more than 500,000 in 1830 to nearly 5,000,000 in 1860. The freight and passenger ships, built of iron, and encouraged by liberal subsidies from the Federal Government (Federal Postal and military contracts), employed 12,000 sailors and paid their owners $70,000,000 a year.

They carried the manufactures of the East to the Southern plantations, to South America, to Europe, and to the Far East.

This great fleet of commercial vessels was owned almost exclusively in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and its owners were at the end of the decade about to wrest from Great Britain (and the South) her monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.

The merchants of that city imported three fourths of the European goods consumed in the country, and they in turn exported nearly all of the great crops with which the balance of trade was maintained.

New York was also a distributing center for the manufactures of the East which were sent to the South, the West, or the outside world.

The planters, on the other hand, had spread their system over the lower South in a remarkable manner since 1830. From eastern Virginia their patriarchal[Pg 194] establishments had been pushed westward and southwestward until in 1860 the black belt reached to the Rio Grande.

Tobacco, cotton, and sugar were still their great staples, and the annual returns from these were not less than $300,000,000; while the growth of their output between 1850 and 1860 was more than one hundred per cent. The number of slaves who worked the plantations had increased between 1830 and 1860 from 2,000,000 to nearly 4,000,000 souls, thus suggesting the comparison with the workers in the mills of the East.

The exports of the black belt composed more than two thirds of the total exports of the country; but they were largely billed through Eastern ports, and most of the imports of the South came through New York, where a second toll was taken from the products of the plantation.

DiogenesLamp: "It was unbeknownst to him that the Federal Government was doing the bidding of the Wealthy and Influential Robber Barons of the New York/New England region to rescue their pocketbooks from the efforts by the South to break away from their economic control..."

Total fantasy.
In fact the entire Union was under threat of Confederate invasion, especially Washington DC, Border States and territories.
Remember, the whole Union Army in early 1861 was only 17,000 with half scattered in small forts out west.
By contrast, Confederates had already called up 100,000 troops and launched war at Fort Sumter.
So Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to restore seized Federal properties did not even match the Confederate Army.

But in response Jefferson Davis called up another 400,000 Confederate troops and formally declared war on the United States.
So at that point New Yorkers' lost money was the least of Lincoln's concerns.
The main thing was survival of the Republic, and Lincoln's oath of office.

DiogenesLamp: "Of course that double standard for the Wealthy caused one of the worst riots in US History."

As rockrr pointed out, the same "double standard" ruled the Confederacy.
The difference is: the Confederacy had far fewer men to spare and so did a more thorough job of vacuuming up everyone available.
Still, there were many, many Southerners who refused to serve the Confederate Army, and many other Southerners who served in the Union Army.