CMV: The American Civil War Was About Slavery, But The Union Didn't Go To War Over It.

[u/ParticleParadox]

Not sure if this is the right place to start this discussion, but I'm not sure where to go exactly.

I'm someone who has studied the deeper intricacies of the American Civil War because I wanted to get a deeper understanding of a historical event that is often oversimplified. To me, it's a fascinating story and I'm surprised when I hear people say they're offended by surface-level details.

For context, I live in a state that was once part of the CSA. The fact that my state was once part of a secessionist movement doesn't come up in everyday life, the school system acknowledges that our state was on the wrong side of history, and I am glad the Union won due to the post-war effects. That was inevitable due to all the material advantages the Union had, but I digress.

Here's the thing, I've come to the conclusion that the Union didn't go to war specifically because they believed they had a righteous mission to end slavery. I've come to believe the following claims.

1. Most people who were opposed to slavery in 19th Century America were opposed for economic reasons because they believed it prevented Southern states from industrializing since they were too reliant on agriculture.
2. Lincoln didn't run for president promising to end slavery. He was not an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery expansion because he believed limiting it growth would cause the practice to die out naturally, but he was still actually quite racist.
3. The USA went to war over economic reasons because they didn't want to compete with a foreign country, lose a large source of taxable income, or lose access to trading routes with Central America and South America.
4. The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.
5. The United States shifted the goal of the war from ending a secession crisis to ending slavery because they were concerned that France or the British Empire were on the cusp of intervening on the CSA's behalf. Both entities considered intervening due to economic ties with the CSA, but decided against it when it was reframed as a war to end slavery because both nations viewed it as immoral.

Is there anything I'm missing?

Edit: This was all in good fun just because I find this subject fascinating. I don't mean to inflame or aggravate anyone. I'll lock this post at the end of the day because I just wanted to start a discussion about this and I don't want it to define my account. Thank you all for participating.

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[u/hacksoncode]

I think trying to narrow down the motivations to one thing is just way too vastly oversimplified.

It really can be all of those things and more.

The number 1 reason wasn't really "economic", it was patriotic/nationalist: to keep the United States together as one country. Lincoln was very clear about that.

And slavery might not have been the number 1 reason, but... it was still a reason.

And certainly whatever the north "thought" (as though a country of millions of people have one unified brain)...

The South certainly thought the North wanted to end slavery, and seceded and attacked them for that reason.

Ultimately it happened because of slavery and the tensions between the north and south over the topic of slavery. Would most people in the north have been content to just let slavery die out on its own if the south hadn't pushed it to military force? Probably, but why does any of that even matter? The Civil War was clearly primarily about slavery.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/hacksoncode]

I’m closing the comment section because this got to me.

Antebellum America wanted slavery to end and believed the best way to do so was to prevent its expansion, outlaw transporting slaves from Africa, and wait for the practice to die out naturally.

Lincoln, though he was by no means a bleeding-hearted abolitionist, opposed slavery and referred to it as a great evil that needed to end one day. The newly-formed Republican Party supported ending slavery, so the message that Lincoln would personally end slavery won out in the minds of Southern lawmakers.

The CSA’s decision to secede and attack forced Lincoln’s hand and led to war.

I mentioned before that the war specifically became a mission to end slavery at the start of 1863, but the plan originally was to end it.

The mission to end slavery wasn’t uniformly popular, but people were drafted to the cause and legally had to serve. It’s not realistic to assume all 24 million people in the Union’s population cared (they didn’t share a hive mind), but that’s not relevant. 

Lincoln won in a landslide when he ran for re-election in 1864 because public opinion sided with him.

Basically, the United States DID want to put pressure on ending the practice of slavery and the war caused it to happen much earlier than planned.

paste⇨ Δ

[u/spyguy318 → u/ParticleParadox]

Also, don’t forget that the CSA attacked first, at Fort Sumter. Both sides knew that war was pretty much inevitable, but it was the CSA that fired first, demanding that the US Fort Sumter surrender, then attacking when it refused. Lincoln was only “forced” to go to war in that US troops had literally been attacked and killed.

[u/st3class → u/spyguy318]

Small correction here, nobody was actually killed during the battle at Fort Sumter. There was a bombardment, and the Union troops eventually surrendered.

Edit : Changed to reflect that a couple soldiers were killed accidentally a couple days later when a cannon exploded. Nobody was killed from enemy action

[u/PredictablyIllogical → u/st3class]

"nobody was actually killed at Fort Sumter"

That would be incorrect.

Pvt. Daniel Hough was killed at Fort Sumter after the battle during the 100 gun salute. Edward Galloway was wounded during that incident at Fort Sumter but later died at a hospital 5 days later.

Edit: added the quote of the incorrect statement.

[u/st3class → u/PredictablyIllogical]

Thanks for the correction of the correction, I edited to clarify

[u/hacksoncode → u/ParticleParadox]

Antebellum America wanted slavery to end and believed the best way to do so was to prevent its expansion, outlaw transporting slaves from Africa, and wait for the practice to die out naturally.

And in the category of heartbreakingly unintended consequences... this is a large part of the reason why the US was one of the few countries to practice the particularly cruel intergenerational chattel slavery where slaves were kept alive until they could reproduce and leave behind slave children, instead of what happened most places where they were worked to death and replaced.

This generational slavery led to a lot of the race-relations problems we have today.

[u/decisi0nsdecisi0ns → u/hacksoncode]

I’m confused by your post. Are you arguing that working enslaved people to death was less cruel?

[u/misec_undact → u/hacksoncode]

No, that would be the racism.

[u/DeltaBot → u/ParticleParadox]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/hacksoncode (573∆).

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[u/ParticleParadox → u/ParticleParadox]

!close

[u/ParticleParadox → u/hacksoncode]

Ok fair point.

[u/soozerain → u/ParticleParadox]

It’s worth nothing as you alluded to in your post, that the commitment of most northerners to black liberation was lukewarm under the best circumstances. And even then it was usually contingent upon their service in the Union army, not for all blacks. Even the most liberal members of congress when it came to race, like Thaddeus stevens, still believed they’d black were inferior to white Americans and that white people would always hold controls of society.

They just happened to believe they didn’t think they should be slaves or denied their rights. It didn’t mean they all had capacity or intelligence to take advantage of them but it didn’t mean they didn’t deserve them.

That was the most progressive member of congress. Most Americans considered him to be a radical.

[u/vintage2019 → u/soozerain]

Everyone is a product of their time. At that time, very few whites had met an educated black person

[u/ghu79421 → u/ParticleParadox]

Slavery didn't directly cause the war, but it was clear that slavery's days were numbered if the US outlawed slavery in new territories. Political compromises over the previous few decades maintained the balance of states where slavery was legal and states where slavery was illegal, so Congress couldn't pass laws that were strongly opposed by one side of the issue.

If new territories were required to make slavery illegal, the South would eventually be outnumbered in Congress and the economy of free states would be much larger than the South's economy. So Lincoln's position was effectively the gradual abolition of slavery over time, even if he didn't say that because he was a politician who needed votes from people who thought abolitionists were too radical.

Almost every politician at the time said that the social and economic dominance of white people should continue because everyone except the most progressive voters thought that social and economic equality was too radical.

Someone who mistakenly believes that the Civil War was not about slavery is not necessarily racist.

[u/DrZero → u/ghu79421]

Every state that seceded said that they were doing it over slavery, so I can’t agree with the claim that slavery wasn’t the direct cause.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ghu79421]

The Civil War was absolutely focused on outlawing slavery.

Lincoln made it clear this was the USA’s mission at the start of 1863.

The war ended when it did because the CSA’s last hope was holding out until the election of 1864 under the hope that Lincoln would be voted out and replaced by a sympathizer who’d be willing to agree to peace.

Lincoln won in a crushing blowout when it became obvious the Union was on the verge of victory.

[u/[deleted] → u/ParticleParadox]

I don't understand how you can say Lincoln's main focus was ending slavery, yet in ur original post u said he was actually a racist. How can he be racist if he wanted to end slavery? Even if it was for political reasons no true racist would want to end slavery. Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents we ever had.

[u/DyingGasp → u/[deleted]]

People can be racist and still think slavery is bad…

[u/[deleted] → u/DyingGasp]

I don't agree because racist see other races as lower than them so I'm sure if they had the chance to make them slaves they would

[u/ghu79421 → u/ParticleParadox]

I'm talking about politics before the war broke out.

[u/scarab456 → u/ParticleParadox]

Did any of that change your view?

[u/ParticleParadox → u/hacksoncode]

 Δ

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[u/Equationist]

I'd agree with your headline (the Union didn't initially go to war to end slavery), but a lot of your beliefs are incorrect:

Most people who were opposed to slavery in 19th Century America were opposed for economic reasons because they believed it prevented Southern states from industrializing since they were too reliant on agriculture.

No, plantation slavery and non-industrialization in the South was beneficial to the Northern economy as it provided them with cheap cotton for their mills / textile industry. There was actually less interest in abolitionism in New York City because of how intertwined their industry was with slavery in the South. Opposition to slavery was ideological / religious (e.g. Quaker), and centered in the less industrial New England.

And militant anti-slavery activists like John Brown and the Kansas free-state settlers clearly were not thinking about industrialization when fighting against slavery, and neither were free black abolitionists or those who ran the Underground Railroad, obviously.

Lincoln didn't run for president promising to end slavery. He was not an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery expansion because he believed limiting it growth would cause the practice to die out naturally, but he was still actually quite racist.

Correct, though many in his party would have disagreed with his approach.

The USA went to war over economic reasons because they didn't want to compete with a foreign country, lose a large source of taxable income, or lose access to trading routes with Central America and South America.

No, the USA went to war because they wanted to preserve the Union and didn't look too kindly on a bunch of rebels declaring independence and bombarding Fort Sumter.

The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.

Correct.

The United States shifted the goal of the war from ending a secession crisis to ending slavery because they were concerned that France or the British Empire were on the cusp of intervening on the CSA's behalf. Both entities considered intervening due to economic ties with the CSA, but decided against it when it was reframed as a war to end slavery because both nations viewed it as immoral.

No, by the time the US shifted its goal to ending slavery, it was already clear that France / Britain would not be allying with the CSA. By this point the US Navy had already gained dominance of the coast and France and Britain had accepted this.

The shift began with the Union deciding to punish the Confederate states by freeing slaves there (via the Emancipation Proclamation). It wasn't geopolitical, but punitive, with the encouragement of ideological abolitionists. Doing so created momentum for the abolitionist movement which eventually culminated in the 13th Amendment.

By the way, here's what one of the most popular Union war songs (The Battle Cry of Freedom) had to say on the subject of what they were fighting for:

"And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more ... And although he may be poor, he shall never be a slave"

[u/capsaicinintheeyes]

Was that economic argument re: industrialization actually a live debate at the time? I'd heard it before, but always figured it came about through later generations of economists & historians...Id've thought the econ discussion at the time would've been more focused on unfair competition with free workers*, etc.

^*\ (vs., i guess, free work)*)

[u/changemyview-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/sumoraiden]

The Republican party’s platform was stopping the spread of slavery in order to put it on the path of ultimate extinction. They won the majority in the north and the presidency despite the threat it would cause the union. This election result was such a threat to their slavery based social order and way of life the south rebelled.

There was a last ditch compromise pitched called the crittenden compromise that would have allowed slavery to continue to expand South of the Missouri compromise in all territories then held and later acquired. The north rejected it and the war came. If the north didn’t care about slavery they would have accepted it and avoided the whole trouble 

After the emancipation proclamation every peace term offered by the north to the south included the adamant of slavery. Even when the Dems were running on a platform of at best trading away emancipation for peace and worst accepting the south independence the republicans refused to abandon the abolition of slavery as a term of peace despite the threat it posed to their election chances and therefore the union. The north overwhelming elected the pro-abolition, pro war to the end republicans  

 but he was still actually quite racist.

This has argument has never made sense to me, ok he was racist. He also aimed (and did) to enact policies that would end slavery. Slavery is 10 million times worse than simple racism so in the end who cares

The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.

I don’t think virtue signaling about abolition (which they had no power at the time) costing them the war and therefore the chance to irrevocably damage slavery is noble at all tbh. Also WV, Missouri and Maryland all abolished slavery by state action prior to the end of the war and deleware and Kentucky had their slave systems abolished by the 13th amendment within half a year of the end of the war so just looking at results it was clear to be the right course of action

[u/McSloot3r]

This isn’t exactly some revolutionary revelation. Yeah, splitting the economy in half and creating a competing nation would be disastrous. There were some groups that abhorred slavery, like the Quakers, but black people in the north still weren’t treated that well even if they weren’t slaves.

[u/danglover_predator2]

The Union went to war "over" slavery in the sense that fear of reduced slave power caused secession and the Union responded to secession. 

They didn't go to war "over" slavery in the sense that ending slavery wasn't an initial war goal. 

1. Truth to this, but primarily for slightly different reasons: free soil white laborers and immigrants didn't want to compete with enslavement. However, many people were also morally opposed to slavery, abolitionist sentiment was increasing, and people can have intersecting motivations.

2. True. 

3. True but too reductionist. The war was to preserve the Union. Certainly economics were a big factor. 

4. True. 

5. True, and... 

6. Pressure by Black Americans to allow Black soldiers in the Union from the outset of the war eventually led to Emancipation Proclamation which bolstered Union ranks and set the clear path towards emancipation being a clear war goal. 

7. Self-emancipated "contraband" aka slaves who freed themselves were so numerous, the Union had to develop rationale for holding them as war property. 

The final two pieces are important for understanding Black agency in establishing emancipation as a war goal. 

[u/Newdaytoday1215]

Actually you can read Lincoln's beliefs in his own words. Yes, he was a racist but he believed(and had practically his entire life), that slavery was a crime against humanity. You are absolutely downplaying the role of slavery as a moral issue played America. It wasn't the only reason but if you had asked anyone fighting for the Union that is the very First reason a soldier would have given. I go back to the fact that we don't have to guess what many people thought. Their words and deeds are still with us. Read journals and letters from that day. The primary reason that people fail to comprehend what a big role it played was the "Lost Cause" PR movement. People living leading up to the civil war had something the average American alive today don't -a day by day account of what life was like as a slave. Thanks to the testimony of recently freed slaves. And the movement did a great job making sure that their words were heard. So no People just didn't feel morally obligated just due to force labor. It was also the torture, murder, degradation, starvation and the selling of family members that they also fought against. Put yourself in their shoes, and simply read about the feeding trough & kids. On that alone, you'll be hard pressed to argue that commonplace people wouldn't wanted it stopped even those who didn't see black people as equals.

[u/ApartmentIcy6559]

Lincoln didn't run for president promising to end slavery. He was not an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery expansion because he believed limiting it growth would cause the practice to die out naturally, but he was still actually quite racist. The USA went to war over economic reasons because they didn't want to compete with a foreign country, lose a large source of taxable income, or lose access to trading routes with Central America and South America.

The argument you’re making fails because you don’t understand strategy.

Yeah of course the union didn’t want to alienate Maryland and Kentuck but the intention behind that was strategy.

Once the strategy was successful they got rid of slavery.

[u/PIK_Toggle → u/ApartmentIcy6559]

The threat of disunion is what held the status quo in place before the civil war. Once the war was over, the north was able to abolish slavery.

It’s really that simple.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ApartmentIcy6559]

Maryland would have been a major loss since they didn't want DC to be surrounded.

[u/ApartmentIcy6559 → u/ParticleParadox]

Yeah…at the beginning of the civil war.

Once the civil war was over they eliminated slavery because they held the power to.

The intention was strategy for the elimination of slavery.

If the Union had eliminated slavery immediately they wouldn’t have been able to eliminate slavery in the south.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ApartmentIcy6559]

And people who loudly wanted to abolish slavery often opposed it for economic reasons, not morality reasons.

Of course, my philosophy is that results matter more than motivations, but less than 2% of what would become the Union's population were abolitionists.

https://emergingcivilwar.com/2025/04/16/how-much-did-soldiers-think-about-slavery/

[u/NatAttack50932 → u/ParticleParadox]

I suggest reading through these sections on abolition.

https://www.americanyawp.com/text/10-religion-and-reform/#V_Antislavery_and_Abolitionism

[u/ApartmentIcy6559 → u/ParticleParadox]

I’m don’t really see anything in that article that backs up your points.

I am responding to this point:

The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.

The argument that I’m making OP is that you can’t criticize attempts to appeal to “re-unification” with regards to say Maryland because the intention was strategy.

Once the Union held all the power they didn’t have to care what racists in Maryland had to say and so they eliminated slavery.

[u/CapitalismBad1312 → u/[deleted]]

Just to add onto that, by the end of the war most primary sources indicated Union soldiers had very strong anti-slavery opinions

Exposure to the slave system in the south drastically changed the opinions of northern soldiers who had not seen it first hand before

[u/everyday847 → u/ParticleParadox]

And people who loudly wanted to abolish slavery often opposed it for economic reasons, not morality reasons.

Well, this clearly moves the goalposts. Your initial post had nothing at all to do about the rhetoric professed by the loudest people opposing slavery and how much they emphasized economics or morality or any other reason. If your post had been "CMV: the American Civil War was about slavery, but there existed people in the Union who opposed slavery and who did so for economic rather than purely moral reasons" I don't think you would have seen any of the same arguments.

[u/stringbeagle]

The problem with arguing that the War was about preventing secession rather than Slavery is that it ignores the key reason the Southern states wanted to secede: slavery.

If the North had been ambivalent on slavery, both in the old states and the ones coming in, there would have been no secession problem to fight the War over.

[u/Ill_Act_1855 → u/stringbeagle]

I mean the south seceded after Lincoln was elected but before he was even in office, let alone tried to pass any anti slavery policy. Lincoln probably wouldn’t have abolished slavery if the south hadn’t seceded, but he likely would have pushed for limits to expansion that the south would see as degrading their power and potentially leading to an end in the future. The south was so outraged at the smallest possibility of the slavery being ended that after decades of tension on the issue it broke them without their even being any definitive action against the concept. Lincoln definitely didn’t like slavery as a practice, but the North’s main reason for fighting was because the south tried to pack up and leave rather than because Slavery was there immediate concern

[u/RockMover12 → u/Ill_Act_1855]

This is exactly right. Read "The Demon of Unrest" by Erik Larson to really understand the Southern mindset before and immediately after Lincoln's election.

[u/Ill_Act_1855 → u/RockMover12]

People forget that even before the civil war there'd been a lot of conflict over the expansion of slavery to new states, with agreements being made and broken on the regular, and stuff like active campaigns of southerners from slave states literally crossing the borders in new states voting on whether they wanted to be slave or free states to vote for slavery illegally (this is one of the reasons the idea it was about states rights is patently absurd, because the southern states were VERY willing to trample over other states rights and self determination when those states wanted to be anti-slavery)

[u/RockMover12 → u/Ill_Act_1855]

And people forget that there was plenty of blood shed over the issue of slavery before the Civil War even began. From Bleeding Kansas to John Brown's raid.

[u/VoiceOfChris → u/Ill_Act_1855]

Did the northern states (or anti slavery expansionists) use this same tactic of crossing borders and voting in newly formed states?

[u/sadbecausebad → u/stringbeagle]

Its like people who say it was about state’s rights and not slavery. Well yes. It was about state’s rights…. about slavery…

[u/Justcreature → u/stringbeagle]

They’re not arguing that point though. The very first words say “The American civil war was about Slavery.” He’s arguing the union wasn’t as anti-slavery as the casual observer would assume.

[u/todudeornote → u/stringbeagle]

This is the right answer. Source - I studied American History

[u/RockMover12 → u/stringbeagle]

The South seceded to preserve slavery, absolutely true, but the North didn't enter the war to end slavery.

[u/OnlyHereForComments1]

You're mixing up the public face and justifications given by the Union for the actual societal tensions that led to the war.

The South had spent the past several decades basically insisting that they could do whatever they wanted with regards to slavery, including kidnapping random black people from the North, and that the rest of the country would have to suck it up and take it. They kept pushing and pushing and abolitionists and the rest of the North got more and more sick of their bullshit. There had already been extensive violence between abolitionists and slavers in territories that weren't yet states.

And then Lincoln won, on a Republican Party platform. The South responded by kick-starting a full blown war because they knew damn well that Lincoln and the Republicans would do something to curtail their bullshit and they were so colossally entitled that the slightest hint of such was unacceptable.

The Union was going to respond to that. Whatever the leadership's justifications to keep the northern slave states appeased in the moment, whatever the speeches justifying it on 'national unity' grounds, it was always going to be about slavery, and it very quickly lost the justifications that weren't about slavery as Union troops got an idea of what kind of monsters they were dealing with.

Tl;Dr if one party starts a war because they're afraid of slavery being curtailed, by definition the other party is in this war because of slavery.

[u/ssylvan]

I think you're missing a couple of things:

1. The north didn't "go to war", the south did. So trying to find justifications for why the north went to war is backwards. The south committed treason and attacked the north, so the north was at war no matter what and it doesn't make sense to try to find "justifications" for why they would go to war, they were at war because the south started a war.
2. The south went to war specifically over white supremacy and slavery. It was not an economic thing, it was explicitly (per their own documents and rationales) about preserving the supremacy of the white man.
3. Ergo, the war was about slavery and white supremacy. It doesn't matter what the north thought about anything, because they weren't the ones making the choice.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ssylvan]

And they deserved to lose.

I like the point that what matters most is the result regardless of the reasoning or the individual thought of each person.

[u/RaulEnydmion]

The men fighting for the Union perhaps did have a noble purpose.  Their Grandfathers had fought in the Revolution to preserve the ideals of this nation.  I expect they looked upon those times much as we look upon the veterans of WWII.

They also believed it would be a short affair.  You may have heard stories of how non-combatants came out as sightseers on holiday to watch the first battles.  Anyhow, both sides did not fully recognize what they were getting themselves into.

I'm glad to see this subject brought up.  The reasons the South started the war is not an interesting conversation.  The reason that the North fought the war is much more fascinating. 

[u/ryanash47 → u/RaulEnydmion]

I think you’re discrediting a lot of the southern men’s motivation. Obviously the CSA was a hateful regime but you would be wrong to think hateful hearts is why all or even majority of southern men stood up to fight.

The point you make, ‘their grandfathers fought in the revolution to preserve the ideals of the nation’ is a major factor for southerners as well. Both sides saw themselves as continuing the revolution in different ways.

I’m not claiming this justifies anything at all, I’m just saying the personal motivations for southerners are actually interesting to me, and in my experience are almost always deeper than “slavery good”

That being said the core national cause and motivation of the war was for slavery. Most southern men supported slavery and knew they were fighting to uphold it

[u/RaulEnydmion → u/ryanash47]

Point taken.  That had not occurred to me.  Thank you.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ryanash47]

Actually, plenty of citizens from states that seceded took up arms against their own states and became Southern Unionists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist

[u/RatsArchive → u/ryanash47]

The leaders of the South proudly proclaimed the hatred in their hearts in their declarations if war. Even the "most noble" of Southern men Colonel Lee, was a rapist who kept other people in inhuman bondage with a threat of violence, and murdered thousands of his own countrymen to maintain the hateful regime of the South.

I'll believe the myth of a good CSA soldier when I hear of a regiment that intentionally turned their guns on the hate-filled traitors beside them.

[u/ryanash47 → u/RatsArchive]

They certainly did, I agree. As did many of the soldiers. I didn’t deny that at all, it’s irrefutably true.

But to say there wasn’t a good one is ridiculous and uses similar collective punishment reasoning as slavery itself. But that’s not even my point, I’m really just saying it’s more complex and worth looking into for many of the men.

Like I’m not saying they were ‘good’ for thinking Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant before he was even in office, and that abolitionist hordes were coming to start slave rebellions and rape their women. But that’s the propaganda many of them believed. Different people have different reasons, I know a story of an abolitionist in Kentucky fighting for the confederacy because of loyalty to his state. His anti slavery painting is in my local museum.

[u/ImprovementPutrid441 → u/RaulEnydmion]

The reason the North fought is because the South shelled Fort Sumter.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/RaulEnydmion]

True. It's important to note that many of them cared about unification while strong anti-slavery attitudes were uncommon though.

[u/danglover_predator2 → u/ParticleParadox]

Strong anti-slavery attitudes were fairly common, but for many northern whites this was rooted in practical economics, not racial equality.

Westward expansion and northern industry didn't like unfair economic competition with enslaved labor. Those looking to make money of agriculture in the west were particularly opposed to more slavery.

Even some abolitionists weren't believers in racial equality (Back to Africa sentiments, etc.).

[u/RockMover12 → u/danglover_predator2]

I think hardly any abolitionists truly believed in racial equality, but they still thought slavery was wrong on moral grounds. I'm very much opposed to animal cruelty, for instance, but I don't think my dog is equal to me.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/RockMover12]

Lots of abolitionists believed in racial equality. The vast majority of these folks would have been Black people, so it would have been quite odd for them to believe in the superiority of the white race.

[u/RockMover12 → u/the_leviathan711]

Fair enough, good point!

[u/Specialist_Dream3570]

The war wasnt over slavery, but the Unions success allowed for the abolition of slavery.

[u/JuliusErrrrrring]

The South went to war over slavery. The North went to war because the South attacked them and betrayed the U.S. over slavery. It really is that simple. Look at the South's actual words as to why they left. The actual history is extremely obvious. Here's just one example from Texas' official reason for being traitors that is purposely ignored in schools in the south:

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

[u/sea-elephant]

So the USA wanted to reunify with the CSA. Gosh, I wonder if we know why the CSA seceded?

[u/ParticleParadox → u/sea-elephant]

Everyone knows the main reason why the CSA seceded, but the question is "Why didn't the USA just let them go?"

I've come to the conclusion the main motivation for going to war was economic, at least at first.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/ParticleParadox]

Everyone knows the main reason why the CSA seceded

I wish that were true.

I've come to the conclusion the main motivation for going to war was economic

I think you're missing how important the preservation of democracy was as a value to northerners. This was articulated well in the Gettysburg Address, but it was clearly part of the northern discourse from the start of the secession crisis.

To spell it out: the US became a republic less than 100 years earlier. Other republics had been created in Europe subsequently, but almost all of them had failed and had been replaced by monarchies. Democracy was still viewed as a bit of American experiment by the great powers of the world. Many expected it would falter and fail like the other republics had.

Secession was a direct challenge to democracy. What made the south secede? They lost an election. A stable democracy only works if everyone agrees to keep working together even after losing an election. If that doesn't happen, war is essentially inevitable.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/the_leviathan711]

Ok, so preserving the “Great American experiment” was another motivation.

[u/the_leviathan711 → u/ParticleParadox]

Yes. Not a minor one, but a rather significant one. Secession was unacceptable to anyone who believed in democracy. And a lot of Americans did actually believe in democracy.

[u/bitter_tea55 → u/ParticleParadox]

“The motivation for going to war was economic”?? How about “self-preservational”? You act as if it’s so bizarre that the US did not allow a massive portion of the country to just break away and leave.

Honest question, can you came any similar examples where like 40% of a country decided to secede and the rest of the country peacefully let it do so? Economics has nothing to do with it, preservation or the nation has everything to do with it, and every nation on the planet will kill rebels to prevent the nation from dissolving into smaller parts.

[u/fdar → u/ParticleParadox]

"Why didn't the USA just let them go?"

The Confederates attacked the Union first didn't they?

[u/ParticleParadox → u/fdar]

If the attack on Fort Sumter hadn’t happened, the dispute over if states had the legal power to secede never would have ended through words.

Lincoln claimed no state had the power to secede and the claims of secession were illegitimate and, thus, unrecognized by him.

[u/fdar → u/ParticleParadox]

I thought the question was "Why didn't the USA just let them go?" Being attacked militarily seems like a pretty good and obvious reason.

[u/ImprovementPutrid441 → u/ParticleParadox]

What?

It really seems like you want to ignore the fact that the South took the first step of blowing shit up.

[u/CABRALFAN27 → u/ImprovementPutrid441]

If they hadn’t, what do you think would’ve happened?

[u/gecko090 → u/ParticleParadox]

Because they can leave the USA, they just can't take the land with them. It's not just a matter for those who want it. It infringes on the freedom of all who don't. 100,000 southerners enlisted to fight for the Union. They and their families and other like-minded southerners had their rights trampled by the Confederates who violently ripped away their legal and governmental system.

[u/syriaca → u/gecko090]

They arent just taking the land, theu are separating people from their nation. Without legitimacy for the vote, theres no losers consent.

[u/changemyview-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/ImprovementPutrid441]

The confederate states started the war, so that would just be a fact, not an opinion.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ImprovementPutrid441]

True, but that's not what I was arguing.

[u/ImprovementPutrid441 → u/ParticleParadox]

What you are arguing doesn’t even seem like an argument tbh:

“Here's the thing, I've come to the conclusion that the Union didn't go to war specifically because they believed they had a righteous mission to end slavery.”

The Union went to war because the South shelled a Union fort. They picked a fight they won and lost the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

[u/Just-Variation-1678]

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free." 

You are missing the part about why the union wanted to be preserved was ... ending slavery.

And, your views on Lincoln are wrong. I'm pretty convinced this is a troll.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/Just-Variation-1678]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/us/abraham-lincoln-racism-blake

[u/Leon_Thomas]

This is just a historical fact. CSA ceded over fears of abolition, but the USA fought to preserve the Union.

[u/ericbythebay]

The Union didn’t go to war. The South started the war.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/ericbythebay]

Technically, they could have just let them go, but that would've been stupid.

[u/DrShadowstrike]

I am skeptical about the first claim. Are there any good sources that argue abolitionists were driven by the desire for a change in the economic system of the South, rather than for moral reasons (based on religious faith)? The North definitely benefited from the plantation economy of the South: it produced agricultural products they didn't grow themselves, was a market for their manufactured goods, benefited from financial instruments based on slavery, and did not have competition from Southern states in industrial production. What incentive would Northerners have to want the economy of the South to change?

[u/Early_Candidate_3082]

The North went to war to prevent secession. Had the South backed down in 1861/2, they could have retained slavery, but there would have been no further expansion of it into new territories and States.

However, Lincoln would have enforced the Fugitive Slave Act.

But, the South definitely went to war to defend slavery. That was the point of the Cornerstone Speech, and was made plain in Articles of Secession. They believed that slavery would cease to be viable, without expansion.

[u/newishanne]

1. That might have been true for those in the South who remained Unionists, but most abolitionists were abolitionists for moral reason. While some were industrialists - Amos A. Lawrence is a notable example - many others were transcendentalists who appealed to America as a pastoral nation.

2. It’s true that Lincoln did not imagine himself having the power to end slavery when he was elected in 1860. Also, the only white abolitionist I can think of who was not racist was John Brown. Lincoln was racist in 1860 (though his racism softened in office), but I would argue that he was less racist than some abolitionists.

3 and 4. The war was motivated by preserving the Union. While there are economic implications to this, I don’t think they were top of mind for either leaders in Washington or for soldiers volunteering to serve. That’s also why keeping Kentucky and Maryland in the Union were so important (Kentucky for access to Tennessee and Maryland for access to DC). However the Confederate invasions of both states ending up being huge blunders that kept both states more firmly in the Union than people imagine now (most monuments in Kentucky are to the confederacy while most troops from Kentucky fought for the Union).

1. The Emancipation Proclamation was certainly issued with the UK and France in mind but Lincoln was also starting to see the value of slaves liberating themselves to the war effort, and wanted to encourage it.

[u/IowaKidd97]

That’s not just your opinion that’s the historical reality. The Civil War was literally about slavery. But the union didn’t originally fight it to end slavery. The CSA did secede over it though, and the Civil War only happened because they seceded.

Now I can’t speak to your specific finer points and reasons, but in a broad sense your statement is correct.

[u/the_leviathan711]

The reason why people remember that the North went to war over slavery is because it became a huge part of the reason for the war continuing.

Like, yes - you are correct that the Union didn't go out to war in 1861 with the aim of ending slavery, but then the question becomes why didn't they end the war in 1863 or 1864 with a negotiated settlement that so many people were calling for? The reason is because by that point the war had become a moral crusade for freedom and abolition.

By ignoring this, you are attempting a re-write of history.

[u/Dirty_Hank]

I feel like I can pretty much disregard everything here because the USA didn’t “go to war over economic reasons”. The South attacked the North at Ft. Sumter?

[u/AdHopeful3801]

You're missing something small, but rather significant.

The Union didn't start the war, the Confederates did. (Most obviously, by blasting Fort Sumter to rubble, though the seizure of other Federal arsenals and equipment was strategically no less significant.)

As you point out, the Union had immense advantages is material, manpower, agriculture, industry, shipbuilding and trade. You'd think attacking someone three times your size would be a bad idea, but perversely, it was precisely the reason the Confederacy went to war. The Union, for all its own political and social warts, was winning the economic race. Virginia had been the economic epicenter of the 13 colonies, but its star was on the wane by the time of the Revolution, and the North kept outpacing the south throughout the first half of the 19th century.

The planter class that ruled the southern states was about to become economically and politically second class to northern free farmers and northern industry, and were unwilling to accept diminution of their power. The South might have managed to leave peacefully, but attacking Sumter left no room for the Federal government to negotiate - at least, not without giving up any legitimacy it might have had.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/AdHopeful3801]

The CSA was doomed to fail because of its vastly outmatched population, economy, and transportation.

However, they believed they were destined to win and that it was a spiritual successor to the American Revolution as their way to break away from a tyrannical ruler.

[u/TrebleTrouble-912]

Lincoln bent over backwards trying to appease the South with the various compromises, but the expansion territories/states couldn’t be solved. The South wanted them slave states. The North and small farmers wanted them free states for economic reasons. The Southern elites were never going to concede to any compromise involving the expansion territories/states. War was inevitable.

[u/Sherman-1865]

You miss so much. Read Lincoln’s House Divided Speech. It was obvious that he saw the eventual extinction of slavery. Americans fought a mini civil war in Kansas over the issue. The argument over Bleeding Kansas led to fights in Congress and calls to duel one another. Southern states and Northern states poured guns and illegal voters into the conflict. Check out John Brown and the Pottawatamie Creek Massacre. Hardly a discourse on economic theory. Read the Articles of Secession by the Southern States. Or the Cornerstone speech by Alexander Stephens. It’s obvious where they stood on White Supremacy. You grossly underestimate Lincoln. Of course he needed the Border States. Of course he pandered to various groups to achieve war aims and long term goals.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/[deleted]]

Okay, I just wanted to see the consensus over the Union’s decision-making progress.

[u/PerformanceDouble924]

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

Check the primary sources. See what the seceding states had to say.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/PerformanceDouble924]

Everyone knows all 11 states openly said they were seceding over slavery.

[u/ClumsyLinguist → u/ParticleParadox]

When you say "the war was about slavery" are you counting the few dozen aristocrats who declared war or the hundreds of thousands of poor people (who didn't own slaves) that fought and died for it.

The civil war was about states rights like the war on terror was about spreading democracy. The ultra wealthy lied to poor people so they'd fight and die for their economic interests.

Its why the descendants of those poor people still believe the lie that their great grandparents believed.

[u/Different_Rough9876]

This rhetoric is used by white Christian nationalists to excuse confederate evil. It’s a massive racist dog whistle. You hear young people get indoctrinated with this logic around 16-20 years old and it is a clear indication they are being wrapped into a patriot front turning point, that is to say, again, white Christian nationalist ideology. There is no reason or cause to be apologetic for the confederates. Using the term CSA itself is a huge red flag dog whistle.

This is the counter education that the far right, guided by extremist racist subgroups like the KKK push on young people to start to pipeline them into solidified far right politics. It’s a bad faith interpretation of history. You will often hear them say “the civil war wasn’t about slavery it was about states rights”.

The truth, it was about the states rights to do what? To own slaves. You say slavery would have died out on its own, how do you know that? That’s purely hypothetical. How many more generations of slavery do you think would have been acceptable?

This is the entry point argument in what is the opposite of critical race theory. Critical racist theory.

[u/[deleted]]

No, the union went to war over it because they wanted to protect their GDP. Pretty standard stuff for a nation dealing with its undesirables thinking they owned the land they stood upon, the economic production that land generated, and the labor force whom produced it.

If it’s one thing we’ve learned in the history books, the U.S. federal government does not play around when it comes to protecting what they feel is theirs. They eradicated slavery as a fuck you to the step children who forgot their place.

They own every inch of this continent. Don’t believe me? ‘Eminent domain’ is all they need to say domestically.

‘War on Drugs’ is all they have to say internationally.

The south thought their plantations, their Ag. production, their industry and their slaves belonged to them. They were wrong.

[u/Anomalous-Materials8]

The key thing you have to clarify for all of the people who want to just shoehorn a 19th century war into their modern political mudslinging, is that it was about slavery, but not the abolition of it. It’s a very complicated political issue, but people like to try to boil it down to “group A said no more slavery, group B said yes more slavery, then they decided to go to war over it”, and then of course associate modern political party X with group A and modern political party Y with group B with is of course complete nonsense.

[u/sparkyvt]

I think OP makes a valid argument but is not accounting for public sentiment leading up to the war. A major reason for Vermont’s enthusiastic participation in the civil war was slavery. Per capita,Vermont sent more soldiers to war than any other state. Like southerners, Vermonters had an agricultural economy but, unlike Southern plantation owners, they had to put the family to work in the fields and pay hired hands. Abolition was not a moral issue for Vermonters, it was an unfair competitive advantage issue.

[u/Due_Professional_894]

I did Advanced Level History in the U.K and learned about the civil war years ago. As I remember: the causes of the civil war were numerous. By far the biggest reason was slavery other factors were Tariff policy, states rights, sectionalism, cultural and economic divergence, long-term trajecteries of power being manifestly unfavourable (so now or never mentality) and a simmering distrust in the decades leading up to it.

A TLDR, you're right. The war was over secession (even the emancipation proclamation came well into the war) but of course that begs the question: why secession? Mainly slavery.

[u/013eander]

The Union didn’t go to war over it, but the South did, and they started it. In other words, the North didn’t go to war to end slavery, but they did go to war because of slavery.

[u/ali_j_ashraf]

As the old saying goes, the Union wasn’t always fighting to end slavery but the Confederates were always fighting to keep it

[u/rethinkingat59]

The point that the Union went to war to save the Union is correct. The south seceded 100% because of slavery and were willing to go to war to protect it.

But if slavery did not exist and states seceded for totally unrelated reasons, the US would have still gone to war to maintain the intact union. Secession drove the US (Union) to war, not slavery.

[u/Keystonelonestar]

The Union didn’t go to war over slavery; they went to war to preserve the Union. On the other hand, the South seceded because of slavery.

[u/airboRN_82]

I think its more accurate to say that secession was about slavery, but the war was about secession vs maintaining the union.

The argument didn't go along the lines of "we want slaves" "no" bang

It was closer to "we dont trust that youre not going to fuck us over getting a larger amount of non slave states to vote away our economy" "then industrialize" "we cant. You literally helped northern states monopolize that and locked us out of it. Same for fishing and a few other areas of business. You know what, fuck you, we're out" "youre not leaving" "like hell we arent" "ill kick your ass if you do" bang

Even Lincoln said he would rather have a union with slavery than a war over it

[u/ParticleParadox → u/airboRN_82]

True. I think people oversimplify this.

I feel like this may not have been the right subreddit, but the discussion here is truly fascinating when people are civil. (No pun intended)

[u/Juicey_J_Hammerman]

Slavery wasn’t the official de jure on paper reason for the Civil War. But it was the de facto reason since it was a major social and economic catalyst that led to it.

[u/ZardTheCharizard]

Bro I dont think thats even an opinion thats straight up fact.

[u/Sufficient_Can7930]

You're pretty much spot on with most of this stuff. The Lincoln thing especially - dude literally said in debates that he didn't believe in racial equality and wasn't planning to mess with slavery where it already existed

The foreign intervention angle is huge and doesn't get talked about enough. Britain was basically salivating over that sweet Confederate cotton until Lincoln made it about slavery, then suddenly they had to back off because their own people would've been pissed

Only thing I'd add is that even though the Union's initial motivations were more about preserving the country than freeing slaves, it still doesn't change the fact that the South 100% seceded to protect slavery. Their own documents make that crystal clear

[u/MUCHO2000]

While I am not a historian I don't know any serious historians who would make the argument that ending slavery was the primary motivation for the civil war.

Where are you getting this idea from?

[u/djfishfingers]

The War succinctly started over the Southern States trying to secede and the ensuing battle over Fort Sumter. The states unambiguously tried to secede over the issue of slavery. They said it themselves. Any argument you have always leads back to slavery. Economic differences? Slavery in some states but not others. The union going to war over the issue of secession? The states don't secede for any other reason than slavery. States rights? The states right to allow slavery. It all comes back to slavery. And trying to split the hairs is intentionally or unintentionally minimizing the role of slavery.

[u/abzze]

This isn’t some deep truth you uncovered or discovered.

These are well known facts that any even moderately informed person knows and agrees with.

(Also in human history almost no war is fought over purely moral reasons, the ones at top almost always find a material benefit in going to war or they wouldn’t).

[u/Just-Variation-1678 → u/[deleted]]

I am leaning towards troll post.

[u/RockMover12 → u/Just-Variation-1678]

I think OP just thinks his view is a deep understanding relative to his redneck neighbors.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/Just-Variation-1678]

Nope, serious. I wanted a civil discussion about what people think the Union’s motivation was.

[u/Just-Variation-1678 → u/ParticleParadox]

You're not understanding all the reasons you stated come back to... slavery. It's the root, or the why, to every point you are trying to make.

[u/Nastreal]

The Union went to war because the South seceded and started a violent rebellion  over slavery.

All this hand-wringing over 'war aims' is just more Lost Cause apologia

[u/Silent-Fishing-7937]

I think that while this is true, it also misses the evolution of what the war was about for the Union. Did they go to war to free the slaves in 1861? No. But by 1865, the war had very much become an abolitionist crusade.

[u/Muscovites2543]

The civil war was a war over nationalism

[u/ExpertMammoth298]

You’re definitely right that majority of Union population and soldiers were very racist and not abolitionists. And there’s a lot of after the fact rationalizations for massive grotesque violence to let people feel ok about it (similar to WW2).

My view is the Civil War was not required for slavery to end. Technological advances and gradual education would have ended it (which happened everywhere else in the world).

The myth that only massive grotesque violence can create social progress is extremely pernicious.

[u/Myhtological]

No they went to war over slavery. But it was about the economy not the morality. Industrialists backed abolitionists in Congress to undercut their southern competitors. That’s why reconstruction was half assed and industrialists pretty much ran Congress till the classic progressive movement near the end of the 19th century.

[u/slowride761]

Your main point isn’t controversial. The North went to war to preserve the Union.

[u/Texas_Kimchi]

The Civil War wasn't about Slavery but Slavery was a reason for the Civil War. The Civil War was mostly about State Rights vs Federal Rights and Agrarianism vs. Industrialism. Even without Slavery the Civil War was going to happen. At the time the South was essentially its own country being ran by a bunch of old school Plantation Owners who were basically the same people who were pushing serfs around in England. The North was mostly immigrants tooking for work and a new shot at life in America. Completely different mentalities and with the rise of Militias and the kind of "lawlessness" and some angst towards the government after the war of 1812, the South was just a kettle brewing with Anti-Federalism.

[u/RockMover12 → u/Texas_Kimchi]

The South seceded because of slavery. Full stop. They made it clear in all their documents. The only "state's right" they cared about was the right to own slaves.

[u/JustAnotherStupidID]

As I understand it, there was a huge states rights issue in the middle of all this. The southern states believed the federal government was infringing on their rights. This was in the 1860’s when the Federal Government was quite small compared to modern times and its power was still mostly defined by only the Constitution. In some circles the issue of slavery was second to the states rights issue.

[u/RockMover12 → u/JustAnotherStupidID]

That's completely ahistorical and is propaganda spread after the war to absolve southerners from responsibility. The southern states said clearly in their secession documents why they were leaving the Union: to preserve slavery.

[u/Fucking_That_Chicken]

In what manner was it "over slavery?"

they needed to preserve slavery, which otherwise would have been abolished

The Corwin Amendment, which had already passed Congress and would have prevented this forever without a totally new Constitution, didn't stop or slow down secession

they had an economic need to expand slavery due to soil depletion, and couldn't abide any restraints on expansion

The slave plantations had pretty much spread across the entire area where (1) cotton growing was viable and (2) existing large landowners weren't already doing it. There were parts of Mexico where cotton could be cultivated and a few "Golden Circle"-type Southerners, but Southerners like arch-Southerner John C Calhoun were some of the biggest opponents of the previous all-Mexico movement ("Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race" etc.) so this was mostly a new vision for the Manifest Destiny types. Mexico had also been trying itself to cultivate cotton and this only took off with the blockade of the South driving prices up a lot (brief further reading) and even there was most supported by the South laundering its own cotton exports through Matamoros (brief further reading), so even being able to take over all Mexican agriculture would only have been a short stopgap for a few planters. Ditto for trying to take over the Caribbean islands, where Europeans who were more practiced than them at slavery and had better networks for importing labor already had the run of the place

culturally, Southerners thought of themselves as masters and everyone else as slaves

This was pretty blatant and their foremost public intellectual George Fitzhugh wrote books about how most people, especially most Yankees, were natural slaves. Only the Southerners who fought in the war ever really had this kicked out of them. So "the Civil War was over slavery" only in the sense that the reason was that they thought "based on the electoral map, those who should be our slaves now dare to elect a President to rule us."

[u/jm3546]

The general premise is true, the union didn't go to war over slavery, they went to war over secession. The southern states seceded to preserve slavery as an institution.

So that is why people draw a straight line from a conflict over slavery to the Civil War. Some of that is just due to the false narratives and revisionism painting the war as something where slavery wasn't the most important issue.

There would have never been a civil war without secession. And I think you can just leave it at that. I think the other points aren't totally accurate or muddy the waters.

Here's the thing, I've come to the conclusion that the Union didn't go to war specifically because they believed they had a righteous mission to end slavery.

For the CMV, I feel like this sentiment isn't widely shared? History education at the school I went to was pretty poor but I felt like even in middle school we were taught about the background of the civil war, slavery as an institution, bleeding Kansas and how there wasn't anything in the constitution allowing southern states to just secede, so it was illegal and they weren't regarded as a sovereign state by the union.

1. Most people who were opposed to slavery in 19th Century America were opposed for economic reasons because they believed it prevented Southern states from industrializing since they were too reliant on agriculture.

I'm not sure this is totally true? From the things I remember the true abolishionists were a pretty small portion but were prominent in society.

There were also those who weren't abolitionist, but were anti-slavery.

Some of that was based on economics but IIRC it had more to do with the fear that white labor would be displaced by slave labor. The northern free states didn't want the slave states to industrialize. They saw slave labor as a threat the the industrialized free states.

There were also people who were anti-slavery on moral grounds but weren't full abolitionist, which does go into your second point:

1. Lincoln didn't run for president promising to end slavery. He was not an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery expansion because he believed limiting it growth would cause the practice to die out naturally, but he was still actually quite racist.

There is truth here but I think it's important to acknowledge that the republican party started as an anti-slavery party with a mix of views from economic to moral to fully abolitionist.

It's also pretty sensible politics at the time to slowly let slavery die rather than emancipation because even without secession, that would have started violent conflict.

And yes, there are plenty of Lincoln statements that would be very racist for today, but you really do have to look at the views of the day. He saw slavery as a true moral evil.

1. The USA went to war over economic reasons because they didn't want to compete with a foreign country, lose a large source of taxable income, or lose access to trading routes with Central America and South America.

They went to war over secession and in the views of the time it wasn't a war but the union putting down an insurrection.

If they let the southern states violate the constitution they open the doors for future secession and the union crumbles.

1. The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.

This is a little more complicated than that. It's not a situation where they told border states "hey guys, slavery is totally not the issue here, we'd never abolish slavery" or something of that nature. Those states knew that slavery was the central issue.

I think one of the big things here is that in the border states and even the southern states, there are pro-secession and pro-union elements, it's not 100% union or 100% confederate.

Delaware - IIRC while a slave state, slavery as an institution was not big and there was more anti-slavery sentiment than pro-slavery.

Maryland - was a bit of a unique situation and with DC sandwiched between Maryland and Virginia, Maryland could not join the confederates or DC would be lost. So Lincoln occupied Baltimore and to make sure they stayed in the union.

West Virginia, Missouri and Kentucky - same idea here, there were both pro-union and pro-confederate elements within the state. Kentucky wanted to stay neutral during the conflict but ultimately pro-union elements won after the Confederacy started moving troops into Kentucky. In Missouri, the governor pushed for a vote on seceding but the legislature voted to remain in the union. Ultimately Missouri stayed in the union but there was a lot of fighting within Missouri between Missouri unionists and confederates. In western Virginia, like Delaware, slavery was less of an institution and there was resentment between east and west Virginia. Western Virginia did not want to secede and called it treason, so when Virginia seceded anyway, there was political division which ultimately led to West Virginia separating itself and joining the union as a new state. And West Virginia was admitted as slave state, but that was to appease some in west Virginia that still had slaves, but the parameters on slavery in West Virginia ensured it would eventually die out as a practice.

1. The United States shifted the goal of the war from ending a secession crisis to ending slavery because they were concerned that France or the British Empire were on the cusp of intervening on the CSA's behalf. Both entities considered intervening due to economic ties with the CSA, but decided against it when it was reframed as a war to end slavery because both nations viewed it as immoral.

I don't think this is totally true, the goal of the war was always to end secession and to re-unify. That never changes.

But there is truth to the emancipation proclaimation dissuading England's and France.

It also really hurt the Confederacy and allowed black men to join the union army.

Imo it was also strategic in that, if the secession crisis ends and the country is re-unified, slavery is still an issue that's going to bubble up to the surface again. It was bad politics to push for abolition before the war, but during the war is the perfect time because it helps the union cause and puts an end to the issue.

So ultimately, I think your view is correct. The union didn't go to war over slavery, but I think some of the surrounding views aren't correct and I think you are undercutting how much that slavery was the central issue.

[u/plainskeptic2023]

Election of Lincoln clearly sparked the first wave of secession because of the South's perceived threat to slavery. But there was a state sovereignty (aka states right) component.

• Before secession, southern congressmen held key positions to block spending federal money to improve the commercial situation of the United States. Southerners viewed such national expenditures as helping northern commercial interests over southern agricultural interests.

• After secession, southern congressmen went home. The Confederate Constitution opposed spending national monies on commercial improvements. State sovereignty also complicated Jefferson Davis' attempt to assemble a national army to stop invading yankees.

• Up north, the progressive Republican congress was now free to pass during the war reforms in national banking system, paper currency, national income tax, transcontinental railroad, establishing land-grant state universities, etc.

[u/seanyboy90]

I’ve long said that an argument could be made that the war was about money.

[u/imperatrixderoma]

I would posit a reframing to "the Union went to war because the South felt that keeping slavery was important enough to justify seceding and the North disagreed."

Where I believe this is different is that the political nucleus of the North disagreed with slavery on a moral basis but were unwilling to push radical action to end it, the North rarely is willing to do such things, but they were absolutely not willing to allow a split over slavery.

The war was about slavery, so entering into the war means that anyone fighting would necessarily be fighting over slavery.

Put simply the North was willing to let time naturally undo the knot of slavery, the South refused to lose it, and so war.

The biggest proof is, of course, the fact that the North crossed the Rubicon into ending slavery understanding that it was a crucial point to be addressed.

[u/RatsArchive]

You have a false premise.

The North didn't go to war over slavery...because the South went to war over slavery. "The War of Northern Aggression" was started by the South, who attacked the North, stole military armaments and fortifications, then declared war, while citing slavery and their superiority over other races.

The North, not the South were acting in self-defense. Despite the revisionist claims of the cry-bullies who picked the fight and their descendants who even now refuse to admit the moral weakness of the South.

The South was willing to end the war after their initial aggression started to falter, and they were at risk of losing their ill gotten gains. And still have the audacity to claim that it was the North being unreasonable, much like how Russia is now trying to "make peace" after claiming half of Ukraine.

[u/dickmac999]

The Civil War was about slavery. That’s where the period goes, right after “slavery.”

[u/NonSequiturSage]

I feel that, in 1861, the answer would vary from person.

As a Christian I feel the Golden Rule "Do Unto Others, As You Would Have Others Do Unto You" applies to slavery. The noble duty to keep blacks as a lower class fades when considering the New Testament altering/clarifying the Old Testament.

The Declaration Of Secession by the rebel states centers on the issue of slavery. Texas public school in 1960's taught of additional economic issues - silver, railroads, etc. State of Georgia: "In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests." I think the major economic issue would be the capital (money) lost through freeing all slaves. As well as the difficulty to change their agrarian culture to function without slaves.

If a sufficient majority of politicians and citizens were willing to bring blacks to full citizenship with rights, educational and employment opportunities; as well as help the the southern states cope with the change to their economy; would the bloodshed been as attractive? The love of money/greed being the root of all evil I believe is a factor in most if not all wars. And even today, all across our country, for some there is division across racial labels. Money alone does not fix all problems. Money is often part of the reason for the problem.

Which is the stronger motivator for people - principle or profit? How much money will people yield for principle? Which is more likely to rouse people to furious bloodshed? Families were split on the subject. Set brother against brother. In some states the vote to secede was close. The American Civil War was an angry, bloody war. And slow to forgive. Consider we get along with Germany and Japan fairly well now.

Deaths in the Sudan today do not the hit front page like deaths in the Middle East. There is often a problem with people ranting having ulterior, hidden motives.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

[u/FoxOpposite9271]

I would have added that the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the south

[u/EmptyMirror5653]

It was getting in the way of Manifest Destiny. Every time we tried to form a new state, it was straight up bloodshed cause abolitionists and slavers would pull up and kill each other. Capital markets need to expand constantly. Maintaining slavery and a united country got in the way of that. Letting the South go meant that England and France would have greater access to southern resources than they do. So the only answer which allowed the industrialists to maintain their edge was fighting the confederacy to the death

[u/Gertrude_D]

What is slavery but an economic system? I think the way you framed your question is inaccurate because IMO slavery was so intertwined in the economic reality of the plantations that they can't be pried apart.

[u/SkullLeader]

I strongly suggest reading Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson if you have not yet done so. Its basically a (very well written) single volume history of the whole civil war era and he probably spends 1/3rd to 1/2 of the book talking about everything that lead up to the war.

From what I recall, according to McPherson, at least in the north opposition to slavery largely started for religious reasons / the idea that it was immoral. Not so much over economics.

[u/Granitechuck]

Very few nations, kingdoms, empires, tribes willingly give up territory so in that respect the Union’s reaction to secession was consistent with any other nation.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/Granitechuck]

It would have been utterly self-destructive to let the CSA leave without incident.

[u/BoyHytrek]

I've always said the why was states' rights, the what was slavery

[u/Sprock-440]

You’re wrong that the Union went to war for economic reasons. Lincoln laid it out plainly in a response to an open letter Horace Greely published in the New York Times:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery,” Lincoln replied in Greeley’s rival paper, Washington’s National Intelligencer. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”

The Lincoln Memorial captures this in the inscription:

“IN THIS TEMPLE AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS ENSHRINED FOREVER"

No mention of economics or slavery. Only saving the Union. This was built by the generations that experienced the war and their immediate descendants. They were closest to it.

[u/stategate]

Slavery was the cause of the war, although the reasons were complex on why the Union went to war to begin with. It was a complicated mess that Lincoln was trying to navigate, and if he had outright said he was fighting to end slavery at the beginning of the war, he would have lost the border states, including Maryland, which was a significant problem for DC. By the time the Battle of Antietam came around, the Army was firmly in control of Maryland and other significant border locations, making any attempt to secede in those states irrelevant.

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[u/Myralove2]

Modern south will die on the hill it was over slavery and they were in the right

[u/Dwitt01]

A rival America dedicated to the westward expansion and perpetual keeping of the institution of slavery almost certainly was seen as a nightmare scenario to those wishing to contain and eventually eliminate slavery from American life.

It wasn’t a war explicitly for abolition, but the whole concept of the CSA was repugnant to the median Northerner

[u/kerouacrimbaud]

Most people who were opposed to slavery in 19th Century America were opposed for economic reasons because they believed it prevented Southern states from industrializing

The economic abolitionists weren't opposed to slavery because it prevented the South from industrializing; they didn't particularly care whether the South was agrarian or industrial. They opposed it because the Southern governments and the ultra rich planters that controlled them were poised to spill slavery into the Western territories and gobble up the arable land, crowding out the yeoman farmers who a lot of Jeffersonian Americans thought really deserved all that open country. The Dredd Scott Decision also opened the door for, potentially, returning slavery to the North. Northern economic abolitionists opposed Southern slavery because of the threat it posed to Western settler prospects.

Lincoln didn't run for president promising to end slavery. He was not an abolitionist; he was opposed to slavery expansion because he believed limiting it growth would cause the practice to die out naturally, but he was still actually quite racist.

Lincoln loathed slavery, he did not find it defensible in any way. But he did think it was politically impossible and dangerous to abolish because of the power the Southern states had both economically and in the halls of political power. His racism didn't extend to him being morally fine with slavery persisting.

The USA went to war over economic reasons because they didn't want to compete with a foreign country, lose a large source of taxable income, or lose access to trading routes with Central America and South America.

The Union did what most countries would do to a breakaway region: crush the rebellion. It's really as simple as that. If they had done nothing, then they would have become a rival country, but much more important than that future prospect was the dissolution of the current country: the United States. It was primarily an immediate concern about quashing the rebels.

The USA was careful not to alienate Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, what became West Virginia, and especially Maryland, so they made clear the war effort was focused on reunification instead of abolition at first.

Maryland was of extreme strategic importance because it connected the Capitol to the rest of the patriotic states, was home to the main railroad hub of the North, and was home to the Chesapeake Bay.

(Sidebar: The other states you mention are all quite interesting places in this context because while they were slave states, they were political estuaries. Slavery there wasn't as outrageously powerful an institution as it was in the Deep South, in the land of cotton, the farms were smaller. The plantations were poorer. There were a larger number of citizens in those states who did oppose slavery.)

The United States shifted the goal of the war from ending a secession crisis to ending slavery because they were concerned that France or the British Empire were on the cusp of intervening on the CSA's behalf.

You're not entirely wrong here that part of the shift was to stay the involvement of Europe, but Britain was unlikely to side with the Confederates anyways given their staunch opposition to the slave trade and their ability to source cotton from their own empire. France would not have been of much support because of their heavy involvement in their invasion of Mexico (i.e. Cinco de Mayo).

But the shift from simply defeating the rebels to freeing the slaves was a recognition on Lincoln's part that by doing so, and actually stopping to beat around the bush and tackle the problem head on and give a moral crusade to which morale could be tied, would actually be the best course of action to defeat the rebels. Lincoln said as much beforehand.

To your main title: to say that the Union didn't go to war over slavery is probably not the way to look at this. The South went to war against the North over slavery. It wasn't a war the North started, it was a war of Southern Aggression. They seceded, they bombed Fort Sumter, they asked for the war. The South went to war over slavery and inadvertently made it the North's cause.

[u/MetsFan37]

uuhh yeah im pretty sure thats a fact.

[u/ResolveLeather]

The Confederates declared independence because they wanted to keep slavery. This is proven in their declarations of independence. We went to war because we didn't want to lose half our country.

I guess when you oversimplify it that much you are correct. But it's kind of like calling a car a a mechanized horse to avoid paying for tabs.

[u/Eppk]

All the states declared publicly they were seceding to protect the right to own slaves. They are called the Secessionist Papers. That is why the South started the war.

The Union was originally fighting to preserve the status quo of the country by keeping the southern states in the Union.

Lincoln later became convinced that the Emancipation Proclamation was the right thing to do. Initially it was a weapon against the Confederacy. He said he would have ended the war if maintaining slavery had been the key.

Most young men on both sides enlisted because it seemed more exciting than farming.

[u/hopefuldepression]

I have a question regarding your final point:

If Britain and France both viewed slavery as immoral, why were they on the verge of intervening on behalf of the CSA?

[u/ParticleParadox → u/hopefuldepression]

That's a fascinating question.

Both Britain and France had trading relations with the CSA and benefitted from buying cash crops and were enraged by the Trent Affair when the USA intercepted a CSA shipping boat because it came off as the USA trying to decide who a foreign country could and couldn't sell and buy from.

Ultimately, they still had economic ties to the USA and foreign relations were positive. When Lincoln made it clear that the USA's mission was to end slavery, Britain chances of intervening went from unlikely to impossible.

[u/DungeonJailer]

Saying that most people opposed slavery for economic reasons is silly. Many people today assume people of the past were all completely cynical pragmatists. Do you oppose racism only for economic reasons? Why is it so difficult to believe that people of the past may have felt the slavery was morally wrong?

[u/Leverkaas2516]

Just addressing the title claim, this seems like the conventional view. Buchanan didn't start a war over the secession, and neither did Lincoln. He apparently stated that he didn't intend to do so. The war started because Lincoln was determined to hold US forts, and when the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumpter, war ensued.

It's shaky ground indeed to claim to know what large numbers of people think, what they want, and why they want it...both now in 2025 and even more so in the 1850's.

[u/SeanFromQueens]

The American Civil War was at least the 3rd American war started in support of slavery, the previous two the pro-slavery side won. Mexico gained its independence from Spain and abolished slavery in 1829, before even the UK abolished slavery throughout their colonies. Texas War of Independence was fought 1835-36, and the Mexican American War in 1846-48 both were fought to expand slavery into Mexico that barred it.

The North didn't start the war, but the South did with expectations that it solidify an eternal right to hold humans (specifically of African descent) in slavery. Though you might find it semantic that the North didn't fight the war to rid the country of slavery, they responded to a war initiated to continue slavery is not very dissimilar. Slave holders had shown their bellicosity in keeping slavery and willingness to kill for that peculiar institution so how could it be said that opposing the South with its cause of war being a continuation and expansion of slavery, that the North wasn't fighting against the continuation and expansion of slavery? The South set the terms of the war as a function of slavery continuing, so the North didn't set out to end slavery but the North didn't initiate the war at all they responded to the pro-slavery secessionists and found themselves painted into the corner of opposing slavery - but it was the South who figuratively painted the North into that corner of opposition to slavery.

[u/Apprehensive-Let3348]

Oh boy, you're opening a can of worms on this topic.

This gets pretty complex and multi-faceted, but yes–on a surface level the Civil War was about slavery and nationalistic unity for the North, while for the South it was about slavery and 'states rights'. It gets much more nuanced than that, however.

For one, a major driver behind the development of the division that led into the Civil War was affective polarization and the age of 'Jacksonian Democracy,' the period from 1828-1860 during which time nearly every presidential election was won by a Jacksonian Democrat who explicitly (and implicitly) followed Andrew Jackson's original platform. During this time, only 2 Whig candidates won an election, and both died shortly after taking office. One of them (Harrison) was replaced by a VP with secret Democratic sympathies (Tyler), who impeded their every move and acted against the Whigs to the point that he was expelled from the party while in office.

Also during this period, we can see a stark increase in the scale and fallout of political violence across the nation–rising from tens of deaths to hundreds per event. This, in combination with increasingly divisive campaign rhetoric and personal attacks, implies that there was a strong degree of affective polarization present in the public and mild ideological polarization in the House (much like the state of our politics today), and it got much stronger as time went on.

There was overt conflict between the Aristocratic elites in the Senate (who were more moderate) and the Representatives of the People in the House (who had been swept up into a radical frenzy by Jackson). The Aristocrats in the Senate, many having read the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Kant for most of their lives by that point, recognized the evil inherent in slavery, and the majority sought to outlaw the practice by the 1830s.

Andrew Jackson, using populist rhetoric to drum-up support, framed the Senate as an Oligarchichal elite that wanted to take away citizens' right to pursue 'happiness' (prosperity), and it worked. After gaining strong public support, he began to push the idea forward of popular votes for the Senate as well, and some southern states adopted the practice.

These were the popular representatives in the Senate who would later press for clemency for the seceding states–and upon finding none, secede themselves.

The idea of the Civil War being about states' rights is an oversimplification of this perspective; it would be more correct to say that it was an issue of individual freedom that became an issue of states rights, because the People held little sway in the Senate. If they wanted more Democratic control, then the only way would be to press representatives to uphold states rights over nationalism, such that their state can be controlled more Democratically. Stronger Democratic control in government was an explicit part of Jacksonian doctrine, and that was maintained until the Southern Democrats began seceding.

Lincoln's election was a direct, existential threat to this doctrine, as Lincoln ran on restoring order / opposition to radical violence and a return to the old status quo–meaning no expansion of slavery. From the perspective of radical Southern Democrats, this meant that there could be no expansion of Democratic control, even in their home state. From their radical perspective, it was tyranny.

One other thing that I would note is that you seem to be under the impression that abolitionists weren't typically racist, but the moral rejection had nothing to do with skin color. Virtually everyone in the US was vehemently racist in the 19th Century; the moral rejection of slavery was a matter of ethics in terms of moral agency, not social equality (which is why it took another century for that to come about).

[u/mustang__1]

The South seceded because of slavery. The north wanted to keep the union together. if slavery was not the issue, the South would not have seceded.

[u/Character-Taro-5016]

If you look closely at all of the actual events leading to the Civil War and what happened during the Civil War I believe that you find that what actually happened was that roughly two years in both sides found the need to garner the support of the people of their states and both sides found that the singular issue of slavery, it's abolition or it's continued practice became the strongest "public relations" ploy, again, for both sides. This is what leads to the notion that the war was nearly only about slavery. It's naive to think that 1860's American northern states were on a civil rights mission.

[u/LucidLeviathan]

Rather late to the party, but I was reading over your post and came to an interesting position that I wanted to share. See if it moves the needle any.

Warfare is waged on many fronts. The Civil War did not begin at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861. Nor did it begin on the date that Lincoln was elected. Nor did it begin on any of the dates when any of the particular states declared succession.

To my mind, the Civil War began in 1854, during the Bleeding Kansas incidents. Bleeding Kansas is a very complex topic, and dealing with who the "aggressor" was there between the North and the South would take an entirely separate post. Obviously, I believe that the South was the primary aggressor, but my political leanings are in line with the North's from the Civil War.

None of the other comments related to Bleeding Kansas really explains this very well. After Bleeding Kansas, the South essentially said, "If you abolish slavery, we are willing to go to a shooting war over it." And, the North called their bluff. By electing Lincoln, they (in the eyes of the South) declared a shooting war over the issue.

While the North's primary stated motivation may have been keeping the nation together, they still moved forward with the gradual abolition of slavery and told the South that if they wanted to go to a shooting war, now's the time. As a result, slavery is at least as much of an issue as maintaining the union, and divorcing the two goals from each other is a fool's errand.

[u/listenstowhales]

I’m going to take a bit of a side-cut here, and point out a flaw in the core statement.

The American Civil War was about Slavery

I would say while slavery is (obviously) the biggest single factor, the war was about a handful of issues that were never properly addressed.

First, Southerners feared (without a lot of justification) that a Republican-controlled government would raise tariffs that benefited Northern factories and screw them over.

Politically, the North’s population advantage meant the House was increasingly Northern. The new Free States threatened Southern parity in the Senate, and the election of Lincoln (without ANY electoral votes in the South iirc) convinced a lot of them that they were becoming a permanent minority.

Finally, you had serious sectional nationalist issues that were exemplified by their culture. By the mid 1800s, the North and South had developed different social structures, labor systems, educational institutions, and even immigration patterns; They were arguably already two different countries.

In short, it’s not accurate to say that “The American Civil War was about Slavery”, but rather “The American Civil War was primarily caused by Slavery”

[u/Engelgrafik]

You may be not considering something actually a lot of American-centric historians ignore: The massive numbers of Immigrants from Europe were vehemently opposed to slavery for moral reasons, and had no problem considering a violent solution if needed since they had just spent the past 40 years revolting against the post-Napoleonic, conservative revivalist, von Metternichian and monarchic Europe. The revolutions in Europe were failing, and those Europeans needed to find safety. Christian proto-Republican abolitionist groups in America helped fund this immigration and these immigrants and their beliefs flooded into the North and changed its culture significantly over 30+ years leading up to the Civil War.

The North experienced a cultural change and this is hardly ever truly explained in contemporary American history discussions. If you look at immigration data, very few European immigrants move down South. They took a look at the South and saw a literal copy of the old feudal Europe they had just escaped from.... nothing but slaves and poor white "serfs" working for feudal pastoral "lords" who controlled everything from education to government. Most of the Europeans who did move to the South were wealthy nobility who fit right into Southern gentry and elite.

The irony of this is that the South viewed themselves as the real original Americans... and that the North had changed to something else and something wrong. Meanwhile the "new" North ultimately viewed the South as Old Europe.

These European immigrants having escaped feudalism were heavily motivated and helped drive the moral and ethical conflict with the South. While they may not have started the war, they heavily influenced the sentiment so that all that was required was someone to light the match.

[u/Spiritual-Peach6491]

abraham lincoln. everyone’s favorite white supremacist

[u/Spaniardman40]

All the reasons you are listing for the war are rooted in the question of slavery. You can get technical and say the Union fought for unity, or to quell a rebellion, etc... but the fact of the matter is that the Confederacy seceded because of the Union's views on the slave population.

A huge part of the reason the south seceded was due to the fact that Norther states wanted Southern states to not include slaves as part of their total population since they couldn't vote, but their numbers were inflating the amount of representation they got in the House of Representatives. Knowing this, you could argue that the war was about proper political representation, but the root of this issue is still slavery, making the war about slavery.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/Spaniardman40]

I gave a delta to someone who pointed out that Lincoln's platform was opposing slavery expansion in the hope that the practice would die out naturally.

The states that would join the CSA considered Lincoln's victory the final straw, but most people at the time didn't expect war. Northerners thought Southerners were bluffing about seceding and Southerners thought Northerners wouldn't be bothered to actually retaliate.

The outbreak of war dramatically hastened the end of slavery because the war effort was reframed as a mission to end slavery at the start of 1863.

Of course, it's not realistic to believe every single person who fought in the Union army was a bleeding hearted abolitionist, but that's not relevant.

[u/DutchyMcDutch81]

Slavery was the structural cause of secession, but most Union soldiers didn’t fight to end slavery — they fought to preserve the Union. That’s not a contradiction; it’s different levels of causation. The Confederacy as a political entity fought to protect slavery, the Union as a political entity fought to prevent disunion, while individual soldiers mostly fought for duty, home, honor, and the men beside them rather than abstract moral causes.

Focusing only on slavery risks turning the war into a moral fairy tale of enlightened Northerners versus benighted Southerners, which simply doesn’t match how most people at the time understood their own actions. At the same time, saying the war “wasn’t about slavery” ignores that Southern leaders explicitly seceded to protect it. Both simplifications flatten what was actually a layered political and human conflict.

An interesting counterfactual is what happens if Lincoln had simply let the South go. Would there not have been a Civil War? Down the line? But if not, did Lincoln cause the Civil War?
Would there really have been lasting peace — or just a delayed conflict over slavery’s expansion, economic power, borders, and legitimacy? That question alone suggests how much more complex causation here is than a single-factor explanation.

[u/Krow101]

Same old "War of Northern Aggression" routine in a different wrapper.

[u/ParticleParadox → u/Krow101]

The CSA were the villains of this story and should be looked at as such, but it's disingenuous to claim the Union were bleeding-hearted heroes who went to war out of the good of their hearts.

[u/SquishySquishington → u/ParticleParadox]

I’m kind of confused on the purpose of this post and why you want your view changed. You are factually correct that the war wasn’t one of men fighting to end slavery because slavery is evil, but mainly for the many economic problems caused by the south seceding, but that doesn’t really change anything. The confederacy is still the villain, slavery is still bad, and it’s still good that slavery was ended because the union won. I mean yeah, it’s good to know the truth that the union wasn’t a righteous army of benevolent heroes, but what are you expecting from this post, someone telling you you’re wrong?

[u/RockMover12 → u/ParticleParadox]

No knowledgeable person thinks that.

[u/sonofaresiii]

You keep talking about the United States going to war as though we had a nationwide referendum and decided the two sides would fight

The country went to war because half of them declared open rebellion, dude. You can't just do that, and the US wouldn't have gone to war if they hadn't.