So according to you, the New York money power took the United States to war in order to preserve the wealth that flowed to their coffers through the slave-powered cotton economy. And naturally, at the end of that war, they freed the slaves because why again?.
Just out of curiosity, do the Rothschilds or the Queen of England figure into your beliefs?
New York/Washington DC power coalition. Nowadays known as the "Acela corridor." Yes.
But let us be clear about this. The war was for the protection of their wealth and power in several ways.
1. To ensure Southern production income flowed through New York and Washington DC.
2. To stop European goods from coming into the country at lower prices so as to displace their own products in the market places of the US.
3. To stop the capitalization of Southern businesses that would eventually compete with them.
4. To stop the center of wealth and power from shifting away from New York.
And naturally, at the end of that war, they freed the slaves because why again?.
Why did they break slavery? As of August of 1862, Lincoln was still saying that a peaceful resolution which included slavery was still possible. Even his emancipation proclamation protected slavery in areas under Union Control. As late as 1865, General Sherman, in a speech to a captured confederate city said that a year ago they could have still kept their slaves, but now it is too late.
Why did they break slavery? Several reasons, most dominant among them I think is revenge.
1. They wanted to hurt the people who fought them as badly as they could.
2. Other reasons include breaking the South's financial back because at this point there was so much hatred that anyone with eyes to see could have told you the South would be bent on revenge, and they would have clearly turned all their economic resources to accomplishing this task.
3. Payoff political allies that wanted this.
4. Create a newly enfranchised voting class that could be depended upon to always vote Republican, and thus giving them power in Congress.
Also there is the general fact that most people of the North hated slavery, and this would be a popular move in those states. But to clarify that, I need to make it clear that this hatred of the idea that people had "free" workers whom they didn't have to pay. This is distinctly different from hating slavery because you saw it as injustice. This was hating slavery because you saw it as a threat to people who worked for wages. It was slavery hatred motivated by self interest, not morality, and this was in fact the dominant form of hatred of slavery throughout the North. Those who hated slavery for moral reasons were the tiniest minority of the population, and were generally regarded as kooks by most people.
Also, they had so badly wrecked the South's cotton export economy, that it just wasn't that big of a prize anymore, even if they could keep it's income routing through New York. Those years of blockade had allowed European competitors to create enough supply that the South no longer had the ability to control the market as they did before the war.
Without that blockade, nobody would have ever been able to create new cotton plantations that would be capable of showing a profit. Because of the blockade, they were able to create these new suppliers, and once they existed, they would thereafter be critical suppliers to the European textile manufacturers.
So the South's main business was mostly destroyed anyways.
The government is now a check-writing, wealth-redistribution machine that costs trillions.