It wasn’t about slavery, I mean yeah the vice president of the confederacy made a speech saying slavery was the cornerstone of the CSA, and multiple seceding states released documents that explicitly stated they were seceding in large part because of slavery, and all the seceding states were slave owning states, and West Virginia exists because they split from Virginia as they had no slaves and thus no reason to fight to hold them, and the CSA constitution mandated that any new state would be required to be a slave state… but… umm…
I mean they’re not entirely wrong, fighting slavery was a political tool not a moral imperative as it should have been and Lincoln didn’t in fact want to unilaterally shut it down he wanted the nation to figure it out ideally without violence.
Ed: books people, I’m not interpreting anything Lincoln was extremely vocal about it. Listen to Lincoln, he knows Lincoln weirdly enough.
It was a moral imperative for much of the North. Lincoln only barely scraped out the Republican nomination. His main opponent was William Seward who was a “radical” abolitionist. Had Seward won the nomination, there may have been some fracturing of the newly formed Republican party. So while there was indeed a portion of the population who felt the complete abolition of slavery was too far, a huge chunk agreed with Seward. In particular, his own wife, Francis Seward. She abhorred slavery and I urge everyone to read her writings upon the subject.
Not enough to change it by force federally, clearly. I’m well aware, that doesn’t change the fact Seward did not win and Lincoln and his supporters didn’t want radical emancipation they wanted to slow roll everything.
And to be clear the South viewed a loss of slaves to the North as a loss of property and thus trade to the North. It’s dumb and tedious but very accurate to say it was a trade dispute, a horrific hard to visualize in full one but a trade dispute none the less.
Whenever a chud gives me the “it wASnT AbOut SLavErY!” Line I always go ask them to read the seceding states articles of secession. South Carolina is my particular favorite since they started all.
 But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations… [The northern] States…have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress, or render useless any attempt to execute them… Thus the constitutional compact has been deliberately broken…
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
Those [non-slaveholding] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace…property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the Common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that the “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship persons, who, by the Supreme Law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive to its peace and safety.
Not about slavery though… fucking dipshits
