re: Only empires are indivisible.

Question -
"Did the war start to end slavery in the southern states?"

OR

"Did the war start to keep the southern states from seceding?"

i.e. = Was ending slavery the 'cause' of the war - or a 'rallying cry' to continue the war?

Saying that 'the war was fought over slavery' is really no different than saying 'the war was fought over economics.'

Slavery was a moral issue - it was there at the founding and the souther states joined the union in good faith - "devotion of lives, fortunes and sacred honor" to form the union and there were no crossed fingers. The constitution was adopted to "form a more perfect union" admitting that the current arrangement was imperfect - and work still needed to be done to reach 'perfection'

I would argue that the union as it existed in 1859 is FAR superior to the union that exists in 2023 in terms of cultural norms of individual freedom, liberty, and moral backbone of the individual citizen

all with the exception of blacks.

HOWEVER - I would also posit that had there been a peaceful separation, that TODAY the blacks would still have been freed prior to yesterday - and furthermore, the black population who attained that freedom would be generations ahead of our current population in terms of economics, communal peace, and individual responsibility.

Advances in mechanization and power generation would have eliminated the economic dependence on slave labor. And since there was no natural animosity (and this is not to discount the existence of sinful behavior - same as today) between the races, 'things would have worked out.'

And I will also posit that had Lincoln lived, our future would have been much different, even given the animosities of the War.

What went wrong = the avarice of the DEMOCRAT party. The democrat party cannot survive without CONSTANT DISSATISFACTION with the 'current situation' - they are NEVER content to devote their actions to upholding 'to form a more perfect union' = and instead, interpret that as 'do whatever it takes to maintain absolute control'

Democrats cannot exist without huge swaths of poverty - hence their every 'economic' agenda is to ensure the expansion of the poverty-stricken population.

Democrat cannot exist without huge percentages of unhappy people - hence their every 'fix problems' issue is to ensure there are more avenues of 'defining unhappiness' within the population.

Democrats cannot survive with an informed population - hence their every activity is to reduce the educational prospects of their subjects and continually feed them political narratives rather than merely 'reporting the news' and allowing the people to decide what is the best way forward.

The Democrats have established an unholy oligarchy - were immensely wealthy interests control all so much of the information that the public at large is allowed to access that they can safely do as they please and blame the worsening situation on "those nasty racists and ______homophobes."

And unfortunately, blacks are their target audience, the one great block of humanity they have - from the beginning - held down to the lowest possible state of existence, blaming all failures of blacks to advance on the 'avarice of the dasdardly republicans' - and excoriating ANY black who manages to ESCAPE their plantation of menial servants.

Democrats have feasted off the misery of the black population for 150 years, and work constantly to maintain their 'owned property' hold on their opportunities for self-advancement.

Lincoln's great desire to 'eliminate slavery' only worked to re-define the actual terms of 'slavery.'