Fire Memes for Traitor Haters

Abolitionists supported the war because it was the most expedient path to end the practice of slavery. That being said, Lincoln didn't initially set out to abolish slavery. When he was campaigning for president, his goal was to halt the expansion of slavery in the Union, admitting no more slave states; he had no intention of outlawing slavery in existing slave states. In fact, when General Fremont issued an order that would emancipate the slaves of "disloyal" citizens in Missouri (which did not secede), Lincoln immediately countermanded that order. When he pushed for the emancipation proclamation a year later, his intention was not to free slaves, but rather to create chaos behind enemy lines. All slave-holding states that remained in the union were specifically exempted in its language.

And it's not like he was super anti-slavery in his personal views, either. He didn't like it, certainly, but he wasn't above using it to his advantage. When the first black people escaped from slave states after the outset of war, Lincoln decreed that they should be treated as "spoils of war", and used in the fight against the South. He did not give them a choice in the matter. In essence, though they had escaped to what was supposedly a "free" state, they just ended up exchanging one master for another. To Lincoln's mind, slavery was a natural consequence of black people and white people sharing the country; his solution was to ship all of the black people in the US over to Liberia.

And it's not like he was the only person with governmental authority in the Union who had laissez faire attitudes towards slavery. The original proposed 13th amendment, which saw wide bipartisan support in congress, would have prevented Congress from making any laws concerning the abolishment of slavery:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

This proposed amendment was sent to the states, but narrowly missed the threshold for ratification.

So yeah; the abolitionists supported the war effort, but to be fair, it was really the only game in town. The union was only anti-slavery as a last resort, as a way to remove the economic incentive for Southern states to secede again.

Edit: just wanted to point out that only some of the abolitionists supported the war. A significant faction of the abolitionists were the quakers, who were vehemently against war.

Ok. I'm not a Confederate defender at all. Check my comment history if you want some context on my politics.

But you're wrong about the North fighting to stop slavery. The North fought the war to keep the Union together. The Secessionists tried to leave because they wanted to enforce slavery everywhere. There were new states joining the Union, and the secessionists didn't like that they were given the option to choose whether or not to keep slavery legal. The Secessionists didn't like that northern states like Wisconsin and Vermont were freeing escaped slaves rather than returning them per federal law.

So the South was fighting for slavery.

And the South was fighting against state's rights. That's a thing most people get backwards. The only state's right the secessionists were fighting for was the right for states to secede.

But the North wasn't fighting to stop slavery. Lincoln gave speeches in support of abolition, but his presidential campaign was explicit in his intent to keep the status quo and let new states decide for themselves. The emancipation proclamation was two years into the war, and it was many years after the war had ended when all the slaves were eventually freed.

That doesn't mean that the North was fighting to keep slavery. It's just that the political climate was complicated, and there were a lot of Northern slave owners that Lincoln needed to placate. It doesn't make Lincoln a bad guy, or tarnish his legacy. He did indeed win the war and free the slaves, and he was murdered for his efforts.

The North never accepted the concept that the Confederate States weren't still part of the USA, so it also wouldn't be accurate to say the North "invaded" the South at all. We should be precise in our language.

Slaver terrorists attempted a rebellion because they wanted slavery in all American territories, and were afraid they would eventually be prohibited from keeping slaves. American soldiers put down the rebellion and kept the Union intact. This also helped abolitionists to gain enough political ground and popular support to eventually free the slaves.

Who fired the first shots?