My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it and if i could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. - Abraham Lincoln, 1862

The civil war was a war between northern industrialists and southern plantation owners. It was not a war fought to free the slaves, that was a tool used by the north in the war, and not one the majority wanted to use. It is only a modern attempt of the capitalists to claim the war as a moral one. The popular idea in the north was to deport the slaves rather than allow them all into free society.

An industrial revolution was taking place in the years before the Civil War. Inventions such as the cotton gin, the telegraph, steamships, and steam trains completely changed methods of manufacturing, transportation, mining, communications, agriculture, and trade. The amount of goods produced was no longer determined by the number of people working in the process but by the capacity of the machines. Amerika was no longer a country that produced raw materials for the manufacturing nations in Europe. By 1860, the census reports that 1,385,000 people were employed in manufacturing and that one-sixth of the whole population was directly supported by manufacturing. The number was much higher when clerks, transportation workers, and merchants were added. As manufacturing centers began to grow, European immigrants were imported as a source of cheap labor. More than five million entered the u.s. between 1820 and 1860. Although the South had many cotton mills functioning, the factories were small and their numbers grew slowly. In 1850, the value of manufactured goods produced in the Northern “free” states was four times the output of the Southern “slave” states. And with the rise of industry came the rise of economic crisis and the threat of industrial collapse. Even though there had been economic crises in the past, people had generally lived on farms and the economic depressions didn’t create such a great hardship for the masses. But with many people living in cities, economic crises meant unemployment and no way to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. The first big crash came in 1825, followed by further depressions in 1829, 1837, 1847, and a severe depressions in 1856. The recession in 1857 almost completely destroyed the early labor movement. The poverty in Northern and Southern cities was staggering. Rags, filth, squalor, hunger, and misery were words used to describe the ghettos of the 1800s. To solve the problems in industrial cities, many called for reforms. - Assata Shakur

The northern capitalists and white workers feared the southern plantation owners would open factories staffed with slave labor and take over control of the economy. Southern plantation owners wanted to expand their system of chattel slavery to the rest of the country.

At the start of the war in the north, there was quite a bit of controversy over allowing blacks to fight. The two sides of this debate sum up pretty well the north's views:

I admit that slavery is at the root of the rebellion, and at least its sine qua non. . . . I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe. . . . I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine. . . . And then, unquestionably, it would weaken the Rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am not so sure we could do much with the Blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hand of the Rebels. - Abraham Lincoln

On the other hand popular newspapers at the time published this popular verse which sums up the other side of the debate held by many white northerners at the time:

Some say it is a burnin’ shame
To make the naygurs fight
An’ that the trade o’ bein’ kilt
Belongs but to the white;
But as for me upon me sowl,
So liberal are we here,
I’ll let Sambo be murthered in place o’ meself
On every day in the year.