Let's take a couple of facts about the Civil War into account. The Confederacy wanted to secede from the Union because the Federal Government was giving them a raw deal financially. The Confederacy wanted a fair way of doing business with other countries without the Fed screwing them out of money (sound familiar?) The Civil War was not about slavery at all, but about keeping the Confederacy from becoming a new nation. That's why it was decimated by the Union Forces. Without its agricultural output of goods, the Confederacy was bankrupt, and couldn't fight anymore. So why was slavery abolished then? Well, slaves represented plentiful free labor for the Confederacy. How about taking away the free labor so the Confederacy couldn't rebuild itself? Looking at it from a strategic military angle, one can see the Civil War in a different light.