If slavery caused the Civil War, then it must mean that the Union's objective was to abolish slavery, and that the Confederacy's objective was to preserve it.
And yet, when Lincoln supposedly freed the slaves (the Emancipation Proclamation), he freed them only in rebel states which would not recognize his authority. In any areas controlled by Lincoln's thugs (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana), Lincoln kept African-Americans there in chains.
The average Confederate soldier did not own slaves. Is it to be assumed that he fought, killed, and died (by the hundreds of thousands) for someone else's property?
The average Union soldier was not an abolitionist. In fact, the average Union soldier was a racist--not in the "I hate blacks" form, but in the "Blacks are inferior" form. Is it to be assumed that he fought, killed, and died (by the hundreds of thousands) for people whom he despised?
If slavery was the issue, then why did Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia fight so well and so long against impossible odds for the rightful secession of his state and the establishment of his country?
That some men wished to use the war as a vehicle to abolish slavery is not an adequate rebuttal. Lincoln himself claimed over and over again that he did not seek to abolish slavery in the Confederate states, and when he finally did it was a meaningless gesture meant to appease radicals and prevent the British from overtly aiding the Confederacy.
Slavery was abolished in the United States a full eight months after Lincoln's death and the effective end of the war, and it was designed not to liberate men but to bring the South's aristocracy to its knees.
African Americans were free, but they were free to starve and to suffer. The "benevolent" federal government did next to nothing to secure their civil rights. President Grant pursued the Ku Klux Klan only after the Klan had accomplished its mission to throw Republicans out of state offices and secure African-Americans as secondary citizens--since they could no longer be slaves. Look at the freedmen's lot--sharecropping and tenant farming--and tell me that the boys in Washington, D.C. cared about them.
To know for certain that the Union did not give a crap about African-Americans but cared only about subduing the South, look at reconstruction policy.
Well, I would first like to say that i do not disagree that the Civil War was not over slavery. I do contend however, that it was a primary cause of slavery. If you look at slavery during this time you do find that abolitionists are small in number and they are the minority. Your depiction of the average northerner is correct but, towards the mid-late 1850's you can see that culturally people are obviousally affected by slavery in the sense that they become mortified by it. Uncle tom's cabin and other slave manuscripts are printed and the average racist northerner recognizes the very prevalent vulgarness of the southern slave owners and populace in genreral. Politically you can look to the Fugitive Slave Act as a cause provoking people to have to make a decision on the slave matter. Thrusting a people (the north) in a choice can make them backlash against that which they find the less just of the choices. This is evidence by the Anthony Burns case. The other additional problem are the technological advances such as railroads, telegraph, and canals. These advancements made the country a much less rural country and as a spreading nation not condusive to the Southern slave economy trying to gain a foothold in the west. These in a nutshell are my reasons why i believe slavery was a major cause if not the cause of the Civil War and not the southern notion of states rights.
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