It was about Railroad money, it was about Shipping money, it was about manufacturing money, it was about government revenue money, It was about banking, warehousing, insurance, and trade. About the only thing it wasn't about was freedom for the slaves.
It didn't become about that until the bloodshed had become so bad that revenge became a greater motivation than greed.
Yes, Lincoln was a corporate attorney with a "Mercantilist" ideology. What was good for big business was good for America.
We are currently fighting the descendants of these very same people in regards to illegal immigrants, and H-1B visas. Apparently the power barons have never quite lost their appetite for slaves.
Well said. Modern day slaves.
But Civil War didn't start for any of those reasons, and you well know it.
War started in April 1861 because Jefferson Davis ordered it on Fort Sumter -- just as Japanese started war at Pearl Harbor and Islamic terrorists on 9/11.
Civil War became official when the Confederacy formally declared it, on May 6, 1861.
All those other reasons had nothing to do with immediate Confederate decisions starting war.
For President Lincoln those issues were also far less important than his Oath of Office to the Constitution and his understandings of constitutional words like, "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence", "invasion" and "treason".
In Lincoln's considered opinion, he could not do otherwise, regardless of economic reasons.
DiogenesLamp: "It didn't become about that [slavery] until the bloodshed had become so bad that revenge became a greater motivation than greed."
Actually many Northerners understood from the beginning that rebellion would create constitutional conditions where the Union Army could declare slaves in rebel states "contraband" and thus emancipate them.
It had happened before and they knew it could happen again, though that was not their goal in April 1861.
Preserving the Union was their first goal.
Freeing slaves became an objective as the war dragged out.