motivations?
so they’ll discuss the north’s inability to compete against the south’s slave labor? (the labor standard across the world at the time)
Do you mean slave labor was the standard across the world at the time?
The North was doing very well with free labor at the time in both agriculture and industry, and the South was doing equally well with slave labor but only in one crop -- cotton.
As to the labor standard 'across the world' I am not sure what you are talking about. The Southern section of the US was the only place in what we would call the 'Western World' that still allowed slave labor. You could argue Russia, Brazil or some Latin American country that still had surfs or slaves tied to the land or an owner, as well as the Mideast and China I'd guess, but they weren't any sort of 'standard' even then.