> They had a civil rights issue (slavery) the remainder of the states could not ignore. It is not true that the United States waged the war to end slavery. Tho

> They had a civil rights issue (slavery) the remainder of the states could not ignore. It is not true that the United States waged the war to end slavery. Though of course slavery is why the Southern states seceded, the North prosecuted the war to preserve the Union. After all, the institution of slavery remained legal in the US at the outset of the war in '61, with no end in sight--Lincoln had been selected by the Republicans specifically because he was not a radical abolitionist. Only after the North struggled to defeat the South in a timely manner (in large part due to the fact that slave labor allowed the South to field ~80% of able bodied free men) did Lincoln put out the Emancipation Proclamation in '63--expressly as a matter of military necessity. The document gave only a cursory nod to it being "believed to be an act of justice", and it only freed Southern slaves.[0] Slavery remained legal in the United States until 1865. [0] https://www.historynet.com/emancipation-proclamation-text https://www.historynet.com/emancipation-proclamation-text