Thanks for writing this.
You're welcome. My interest in the Civil War waxes and wanes. For most of my life I never thought of it, but one day my best friend, who was both black and a history major, told me that he had just learned in History class that Lincoln had deliberately engineered the Civil War.
He was gleeful, and effusive in his praise of Lincoln's shrewdness in conning the South into firing on the fort.
*I*, on the other hand had several bad dreams about the Civil War over the years after I had red the "Red Badge of Courage", so I was a lot more subdued about it.
At first I thought he was mistaken, but the more I looked into it the more I realized that the information could be seen in that light.
After more time, I became convinced that he was right, and that Lincoln did deliberately trigger a war that killed over 600,000 people.
It was only in this last six months that it has finally started making sense to me. All evidence from the period indicates that for the first year and a half of the war, Lincoln would have allowed the South to continue using slaves.
So why then did people say it was fought over slavery if the intent wasn't to end slavery?
If we accept the facts as we read them and conclude the war wasn't fought to end slavery, then why was it fought? Well, "to preserve the Union."
But why did the Union need preserving? The British Union didn't need preserving, it needed splitting, so why did the US Union need preserving?
Finally I saw that map showing all the coins stacked on New York. The guy created the map to mock the Southern economy/tariff argument, but I eventually realized it proves the argument quite effectively. You see, the import numbers (as represented by those tariff collections) don't jive at all with the export numbers. (Trade has to balance.) We have nearly 3/4s of export value from Southern products, but 90% of the tariff's are collected in New York! (Meaning that's where the money came back into the country.)
When you finally take a look at the numbers, New England was making a *HUGE* amount of money off of both the South and the South's exports to Europe.
An Independent South cuts off that money supply to New England, and would have created a major financial crises had normal European Trade with the South every been allowed to be established.
Their former customers would not only quit buying, but would also have eventually become competition.
The war was launched to protect the money stream flowing into the coffers of Lincoln's big monied donors from New England. That's why they were going to preserve slavery until their own propaganda eventually made that plan completely unworkable.
The South fought too Hard and too Long, and as a result, they had to go ahead and do what they were threatening to do, just to save face.
But remember, their original plan was to get those profits flowing again, not to end slavery.