The irony of this should be celebrated.
Lincoln pondered long and hard over whether to free all slaves; and finally did so halfway through the war. The South, in addition to its economic enslavement by the North, suspected that those Crazy Yankees also valued Black lives – to them a ghastly notion – and if the North gained sufficient power in the US Senate, by admitting ‘free’ states to the Union, their long-term prospects would be grim.
There had been a standing agreement (The 1836 Compromise) such that new states would be admitted in pairs, one slave and one free. Failure to sustain that was another factor which persuaded the South it should separate itself.
The South fired first, but had fewer soldier-age men and little industrial capability, and they lost. Their descendants recall it as “The War of Invasion From the North” and many are reluctant to speak Abraham Lincoln’s name – or so said my Uncle, born in Illinois around 1890. 🙂