Free Labor?

Pretty much?

both arguements are stupid. every war is ideological, and thus the true intentions will ALWAYS be lost to history as the winning side spins their own tale of it.

The civil war was basically a glorified, violent, riot gone bad. The south didnt like Lincoln, even after he explicitly stated he had no intentions of freeing slaves or changing the southern way of life in any meaningful way. The war "becoming about slaves" happened about midway through. Didn't start that way.