Part 1, Chapter 1 Politics of Slavery, Section 2 Summary

During the Civil War, the popular opinion in the North was to save the Union and abolish slavery. It was not so much that the North was against slavery, but they did not want slavery to expand into the new territory to the North and West. They wanted to remain in those few southern states in which it was already prevalent. The reason they did not want the slaves freed was that they believed that if the South seceded from the Union it would be an economic disaster, and that freed slaves would lower wages. They hoped slavery would just eventually go away.

The abolitionists viewed the Unionists as greedy and self-serving. The Unionists viewed the Abolitionists as creating a situation in which the South would secede. These conflicting views caused a war...