Cleaning Up Our Collective Act

[Hasbinbad]

The south wanted slavery in the new states (states rights).
The north wanted no slavery in the new states (but not abolition in the union).

Neither government wanted to abolish slavery in existing states.

Lincoln didn't want to abolish slavery in existing states. The Emancipation Proclamation was a military maneuver aimed at undermining the control of southern slave owners, and had nothing to do with any sort of philanthropy on Lincolns part.

It comes down to the south wanting to extend slavery into the west. That's basically what the whole debacle was over. Abolition was an unintended side-effect.

The south got rich by selling cotton to the north who got rich by turning it into thread and making cotton cloth or selling the thread to European countries to make linen.

Both sides were totally unethical.