The one thing I think any rational person has to concede is that the civil war itself was more about preserving the union than slavery.

Northerners like to claim a moral high ground as if they were fighting to end slavery. The fact is that while abolitionists movements had grown, northerners weren't going to spend their own blood to end slavery. They wouldn't have gone to war to free slaves. If the south hadn't seceded from the union the war would never have happened.

I'm not being an apologist for the south or slavery. Slavery was evil. The south shouldn't have seceded.

The north wasn't made up of angels who died to end slavery. More patriots who fought to preserve their country in a war that resulted in freed slaves.