It was *ALWAYS* about raw power.
Our Civil War opponents simply do not want to believe that the vast bulk of the people on their side in 1860 were simply duped into believing this astro turf crap which had the real purpose of holding onto control of the Congress."
"Raw power," says our trained Marxist about his favored 1860s Confederates.
First & foremost, above all else raw power over their four million slaves -- worth about $4 billion, real money in those days, today's equivalent: $20 trillion.
Nothing could ever, nothing must ever interfere with their "peculiar institution".
- Why else would Confederates declare secession despite not even one real reason equivalent to our 1776 Founders' reasons?
- Why else would Confederates write their own constitution providing yet more legal protections for slavery and making abolition all but impossible?
- Why else would Confederates provoke, start, declare & wage war against the United States, if not to protect the "raw power" they had just seized?
- Why else would Confederates refuse to stop fighting for any terms better than Unconditional Surrender?
Republican motives were quite different, and they begin, first & foremost with the Republicans' raison d'etre -- abolition.
That's not "astro-turf", it's just history.