At the start of the war at least 4 of the eventual Union states, six if you count NJ (something like 100 quasi-slaves) and WV, had legal slavery.
By the end of the war all had emancipated their slaves without compensation except KY and DE (less than 200 by that point).
There is, BTW, a large and vocal group on FR who agree with the above statement. The war, they believe, had nothing to do with slavery and its disproportionate presence in the two regions was purely coincidental. They are, of course, full of cr*p.
Slavery was part of it but not even close to the reason. The real issue was centralized power or States power or local power.
It is actually easy to prove. Lincoln put off the emancipation proclamation and even then, made it effective only in Confederate states. The reason was he knew the soldiers did not see it as freeing slaves.
The fact is they called themselves “Union”, I don’t think I ever heard of them calling themselves the slavery abolishers.
Nor did the Confederates call themselves fighters for slavery. They were fighting for freedom from an all powerful federal government.
Your saying it is nonsense is itself nonsense.
Great info. You certainly can’t count WV. Were it not for the war there would be no West Virginia. Just like western NC, western VA was not proslavery. So the same could be said of both sides. And the fact that the states under both sides conformed to their respective sides beliefs only strenthens the arguement that it was slavery that started the war.