That will lead some to charge northern powers did actually start the war on the pretext of “preserving the union” so they could use bullets and bayonets to overthrow the pro-slavery U.S. constitution that they could not amend using the constitution process. They simply did not have the votes.
First they would have to chevvy the South into a fight in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I mean the Fort Sumter incident.
I am not certain that that argument is stronger than the North simply fighting for their economic and political self-interest, but your statement does raise the possibility that the North started the killings after they became frustrated with the slow process of accumulating political power.
Those "some" people would be very wrong, as usual, beginning with who started the war at Pearl Harbor, er, I mean Fort Sumter.
But the key point about abolition to remember is that in the very beginning Lincoln was willing to negotiate it away in exchange for reunion, so it cannot have been his primary motive on Day One.
Yes, emancipation soon became a necessary consequence of war and that might be foreseen, but just as Union came before abolition in 1776 and again in 1787 so it also came first in 1861.
Of course jeffersondem, you know all that, but just like "some people" you enjoy making absurd arguments.