What caused the American Civil War, and why did the Southern states leave the Union? These are two of the most debated questions in American history. The standard view is that slavery was the sole cause. The North, led by an abolitionist president, Abraham Lincoln, sought to end the institution in the South, and the Southern states left to preserve it. This is far from the truth.

A little digging into the sources from the period shows Lincoln never desired to end slavery in the South, only to prevent its extension into the territories. The Republican platform Plank 4 stated they would not interfere with states’ rights to order their own domestic institutions, implicitly including slavery where it already existed, and condemned any idea of outside military intervention, whether in states or territories. Prominent Republicans and abolitionists, including Lincoln himself many times over, said the same. The last thing they wanted was for free blacks to be running around in their own states or in the territories. The radical abolitionist wing of the North despised slavery but, like Lincoln at the time, were far from wanting to see blacks marrying or working with whites, still less voting.