Was the civil war primarily to preserve the union or to free the slaves?

Lincoln's primary goal was to preserve the union. your last argument will be much stronger anyways. but yeah. he didn't want to turn it into a war about slavery because the border states would potentially break off and because the majority of northerners didn't even really care about slavery. the emancipation proclamation made the cause more passionate but wasn't brought up until the country was well into the civil war so it wouldn't make sense that that would be the primary cause of the war if you know what i mean.

:-) Ellen

Revisionist history wants you to believe it was all about slavery and certainly that was a major factor, but the US had existed for 80 years with slavery. As the other contributors stated: Preservation of the Union was the cause in the North. In the South: The right to buy and own slaves and preserve the "southern way of life" independent of federal meddling or control. Southerners firing on Ft Sumter was the spark that ignited a horrible failed war of southern independence.

It was to preserve the Union. But the Union was torn asunder due to slavery (the South insisted upon States Rights but those involved issues like...the ability of each state to determine that it could hold slaves, the ability to cross state borders to pursue runaway slaves). So while the initial and preeiminent issue was preserving the Union, the Union was not preservable until the issue of slavery was resolved.

To preserve the union. There was anti-slavery sentiment, to be sure. But the Union cause was not dedicated to emancipation until January 1863, when Lincoln signed the Proclamation.

The Confederates claimed it develop into about States rights. the decision of each and every state to dictate its own regulations and ordinances while not having intervention or dictation from the federal authorities. also all for this difficulty develop into the slave commerce. The South felt it had the right to own slaves, notwithstanding the North develop into in contract with moves to abolish slavery. South Carolina keen to be the first to split from u.s.. Many different Southern states observed in structure thereafter. Fearing finished breakup of the Union, Lincoln stated as for 75,000 troops to quell the revolt, this infuriated the South. accomplice forces fired on ft. Sumpter, SC and that began hostilities between both aspects. desire this enables you. playstation .... The North did no longer have "slaves", in line with se. What they were stated as develop into "indentured servants". it is a sticky difficulty to be stated yet yet again.

i believe it was to preserve the union, perhaps you should do more research and also look at the economic aspects of the north potentially losing the war. i think plenty of 'northerners' at the time would have been quite happy to keep slavery

The former.

the civil war was for STATES RIGHTS.