Civil War...want to talk about the Civil War ? Slavery ? we can discuss slavery.
First...Those who bemoan American slavery do tend to assume the black Africa was robbed of her children. Not so...black Africa sold her own children into slavery. The Atlantic slave trade's first link was forged by black leaders selling black Africans into slavery. Second, by the American revolution slavery was already entrenched into the economic fabric. The founding fathers didn't decide to be a slave tolerating nation...it already was by then. The debate was how do you deal with it. States where slavery was an economic liability ended it in ways which were convenient towards white people...compensation to owners and through attrition. In Pennsylvania slaves were not freed, but no new slaves were added. Nice and easy, as a matter of fact the last slave died in Pennsylvania in 1847.
Some have attributed a egalitarian myth to the Northern war cause. I'm sorry but the 1860's were not an egalitarian age. Tell the native Americans just how egalitarian the Republican party was in the 19th century.
Why did the South leave the Union ? Because they feared the tyrannical powers of the federal government. They feared that certain radical abolitionist would use the slavery issue to destroy the country. I think the Southern secessionist were largely vindicated when the federal troops burned Jackson and starved Vicksburg.
Mississippi fought a war of self defense...and self defense is that most just of causes. For the South, it WAS the second American revolution.
And NO.... Lincoln didn't start the war simply to end slavery. Honest Abe used executive powers to suspend habeas corpus to silence those who disagreed. He shut down papers which were anti-government.
This "moral evil" of slavery as the cause of war is simply a red herring to justify tyranny on the federal level, much like Saddam Hussein's crimes against the Kurds was used to justify "preemptive" war against Iraq.
There is a concept called a Procrustean bed where someone acts then creates a "reason" to justify it....in case of war you construct a war then create a cause to justify that war. In the Civil War, the federal government attacked the South in order to assert its hegemony. Tariffs, for one thing, were the primary source of federal revenue. Succession in general would be the undoing of such federal hegemony.
In Iraq, the US government wished to assert its hegemony and replace Saddam with ones more pro-Western. The Kurds be darned !