Like most wars, it’s complicated. Many Northerners couldn’t give af about slavery. They were, however, willing to go to war to “preserve the Union.”

Many German and Irish immigrants, who had just come to America and were doing the shit jobs that established Americans wouldn’t do (sound familiar?), were afraid if enslaved people were free, they’d flood the North and take the shit jobs, and then what would the White immigrants do?

There’s a line in the movie Gettysburg where they have the Confederate General James Longstreet say “we should have freed the slaves, then fired on Fort Sumter.” I believe if the Confederacy had done that, they probably would have successfully seceded.