Of that, I am absolutely certain. But they did not need to know for what cause they were fighting so long as they obeyed the orders they were given from their chain of command. That would be Lincoln, the man solely responsible for deciding whether or not there would be a war, and whether and for how long it would continue.
"Pawns" is an appropriate designation for his soldiers who fought and died to bring Independent States back under the control of Washington D.C. and it's Congress of Wolves, eager to once more divvy up the Wool from the shorn Southern Sheep.
So the only real question is whether Lincoln himself was driven by those nasty "New England Power Brokers", since Lincoln was at first almost the only member of his administration who wanted to defend Fort Sumter?
The answer is: aside from your alleged quote, "what about my tariff?", which even if true could mean almost anything, depending on context -- there's no evidence of it.
Other than the fact he launched a war over a D@mned fort he no longer had any legitimate use for? Other than the fact that he immediately threw up that Economic Blockade which had no obvious military purpose?
What the evidence does suggest is that Lincoln wanted to preserve Fort Sumter as a "bargaining chip" to be traded for something of value, such as the state of Virginia remaining in the Union.
Which i've already pointed out to you is corrupt regarding either possible outcome.
You can't make a "deal" on an issue of principle. If the states had a right to leave, Lincoln was violating that principle. If the states had no right to leave, Lincoln was also violating *THAT* principle.
So there's no objective evidence, none, that either politicians or businessmen were more or less corrupt after 1860 than they were before.
Dude, the "Gilded Age" is well known for being pretty much the most corrupt period in US History. I would say that only now, with the Chicago Mafia in charge (wasn't Lincoln from that same general area? ) have we finally matched the corruption levels that existed in that 1870 time period.
You give them far too little credit.
In fact, soldiers on both sides responded remarkably well to good leadership, and correspondingly to an absence of leadership -- funny how that works, even today, isn't it?
And leadership, especially American leadership, is also based on ideas and ideals, such as simple slogans like, "preserve the Union" and "free the slaves".
Soldiers don't necessarily need complicated or scholarly treatises, but they do need expressions they can hold in their minds when the going gets tough.
Never underestimate the power of ideas, even in ordinary people.
DiogenesLamp: "Other than the fact he launched a war over a D@mned fort he no longer had any legitimate use for?
Other than the fact that he immediately threw up that Economic Blockade which had no obvious military purpose?"
But, of course, it was Jefferson Davis who ordered the war, just as surely as the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
And General Scott's Anaconda Plan, regardless off your ridiculous denials, had both military and economic reasons.
In fact, it hugely contributed to Confederate military defeat by slowly reducing exports & imports of weapons and other necessary war materials.
DiogenesLamp: "Which i've already pointed out to you is corrupt regarding either possible outcome.
You can't make a "deal" on an issue of principle.
If the states had a right to leave, Lincoln was violating that principle.
If the states had no right to leave, Lincoln was also violating *THAT* principle."
But your argument here is totally ludicrous, and the fact that you repeat it endlessly makes it no less so.
Literally, you're just jabbering nonsense, word salad with no coherent meaning.
So the real fact is that Lincoln did not dispute with the Virginia secession convention their "right" to vote on secession.
He merely offered them something of value to adjourn.
I'd call that typical political horse-trading, no more "corrupt" than much of what goes on, even today.
DiogenesLamp: "Dude, the "Gilded Age" is well known for being pretty much the most corrupt period in US History."
I think that's totally your liberal Marxist education/indoctrination at work here, serving to rot your brain from the inside out.
In fact there's no objective evidence showing greater lawlessness during the alleged "Gilded Age" than at any other time in human history.
I think all you've really done is use today's laws to convict people from by-gone eras of crimes that weren't even crimes at the time.
And the proof of my conclusion is simply this: every one of those wealthy "robber barons", without exception, had whole law firms at their instant disposal, dedicated first to keeping their operations legal, and second getting them out of legal trouble when it came.
So they met the standards of their day.
Only our day's higher standards can convict them, and then entirely unfairly.