re: Was the civil war over slavery?

The South frowned upon the draft and the North had draft riots in New York City.

Not over Macho Grande.

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The South won the battle at Fort Sumter. They the started a march on Washington. They had the troops to take the city. Then march on NewYork.
Had the General’s not stoped and thought the north would surrender they would have won the war.
The biggest mistake of the war.
Hitler also made a mistake that cost him the war. He thought he could win a two front war and he found out he couldn’t.
History is littered with what ifs.

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The hypothetical is hard to jive when you realize just how much stronger the Union was, how many bodies and how many machines of war they could bring to bear.

Once a commander was put in charge that realized the advantage (Grant), it was only a matter of time. The only real kicker is that the war lasted as long as it did.

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It was slightly less than 1 in 3 people being slave owners. Clearly the rich/powerful dominated that 32%. Who knew 160 years ago the rich and powerful used to wealth and money to run amok. There's a reason the south had a draft long before the north, because the other 68% had reason to fight for something they didn't own.

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The percentages (near 50% in MS and SC) don't fully make the argument you are laying out. There was certainly an aspirational component where many of those non-slaveholding families would have indeed bought slaves if they had the money. For a large percentage of those not owning slaves it was not conviction but simply money that kept them from being slave owners. The second part is many Southern non-slaveholding farmers at the time actually rented slaves primarily during planting and harvesting. Usually, the payment to the slave owner was a share of their crops.

There is a healthy part of the 68% that either aspired to own slaves and/or actually used them despite not owning them.

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While Lincoln was anti-slavery, he was not an abolitionist. He made it clear that without southern secession, he had no plans to interfere with slavery in the south:

"I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all." - Honest Abe

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You are so off base.

Lincoln was an abolitionist, even in his early days of a lawyer in Illinois...

July 10, 1858: Speech at Chicago, Illinois

In this speech at Chicago, Lincoln reiterated his hatred of slavery and also his belief that it should not be touched where it then existed.

"I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist".

The only reason he AT FIRST did not want to interfere with slavery in the South was bc he didn't want the nation to go to war.

His intent was to outlaw slavery to those territories he controlled and those wishing to bc states. HE felt by doing this that slavery would die out in the south, and he wouldn't have to have Americans fighting Americans in a civil war.

He found out that the South was not going to give up their slaves and the rest is History.

To state in your post these variations are untruths...and the reason so many in the South won't admit that slavery WAS the major issue...bc without slavery southerners would lose their cheapest labor and affect their wealth.

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but how ww2 enlistees wanted a Ferrari, but came back from war vs italy without one?

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Was anyone in WW2 fighting to keep Ferraris?

According to some family journals passed down in my family, as well as a first edition 8 volume set of The History of South Carolina printed at the turn of the 20th century and compiled by historians from both sides of the MD line .... agreed, the war was not fought or started mainly over slavery.

All accounts indicate it really started in the 1830s with tarrifs imposed on the South, by the North, in order to pay for the construction of the Erie Canal. And yes, Fort Sumter was a collection station in Charleston Harbor manned almost entirely by Federal Yankee troops who were legendary for rowing into town and causing problems, among other things. They were commanded by a man who hated Southerners, was particularly heavy-handed towards Charlestonians who back-talked his military authority and he maintained a residence on the battery that was not supposed to be his ... which he had commandeered against the will of the citizenry. He was lucky to be allowed to leave with his men and his life and he has been portrayed as a hero to the north when, in truth, he was a scumbag.

It was a long time coming when it happened and, because nothing has really changed, it is inevitable that it will happen again unfortunately. The north remains the problem with this country.

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It's well known that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't come until 1863, when it was needed as a political move (swayed public opinion in the UK from favoring the Confederacy to favoring the Union, and also opened up the possibility of having freed slaves fight against the South)

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gotta love how Great Britain is seen as the towering symbol of the "High Road" as they fought wars to "protect their right" to import heroin addiction on the Chinese population, in decades previous to all this time, and right up until the time of the American civil war