The neoMarxists and those who have swallowed their arguments like baby birds in a nest gulping down the vomit from their mothers mouth, have only one goal in their rewriting of US history; to divide the people of this nation against one another. This dovetails with their agenda to promote what is called 'Identity Politics' which emphasizes the membership of the individual in a sub-grouping of race, or religion, or gender, or whatever may be found to splinter the solidity of the general population.
Driving a wedge between Southerners and the rest of the country also serves to suppress a glorious defense of independence for the individual states, a defense that prior to the Second World War was never so besmirched as it is by these liars that have take over the history profession as they have today.
The fact is that Lincoln repeatedly claimed that he would do anything to save the Union and he would not risk re-uniting the country for the sake of ending slavery. For Lincoln the war was about union, not slavery, and restoring the union was a far greater concern to him.
For the South, the critical moment came when it was proven beyond all doubt that the North had the population to reduce the South to being its federal piggy bank. Most of the finances for the federal government came from tariffs paid for by Southerners as the North manufactured far more of what it needed than did the South. The tariffs increased the cost of manufactured goods the South bought by as much as 50% or more. This impacted every man woman and child in the South whether they owned a slave or swore to never do so, and it united the South against the North for placing such a heavy financial burden on it.
For the plantation economy, which was not the majority of Southerner's economic activity as most were subsistence farmers, slavery was the paramount issue as they believed freeing the slaves would destroy their economy and it would, and in the leadership of the states political systems the voice of the plantations was much louder than its proportion of the population, and so they did not reflect the common desires of the Southern farmer who owned no slaves.
The North had a great many people who were determined to not fight the war for slavery, and Lincoln knew this, so that even when he realized that emancipating the slaves would be a serious blow to the Southern economy and weaken the South and hopefully bring the war to a quicker end, he was reluctant to do so since the Democrats were poised to attack him at any hint he would shift the war to an abolitionists war.
Slavery still continued in the North as well. Grant himself owned slaves via his wife and he kept two slaves for t his personal servants even as he fought the Southern armies.
The Civil War was not about slavery in its beginnings otherwise there would be no need of the Emancipation Proclamation, and it would not have exempted the states still in the union. To excuse this as simple tactical decision is to admit that winning the war for union trumped the issue of freeing slaves.
The Civil War was not started over slavery but over the subordination of the South to the North, and the North got its way and the South, white and black, slave and free, all suffered for decades from its consequences.
It was never a war for the slaves, but for the Northern corporations to keep the South paying its federal bills.
