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I really have mixed feelings over this war. Slavery IMO is unquestionably wrong. But this war is where we lost much in states rights. More was lost with the 17th amendment which transferred power to the parties.

Let me clear your moral qualms. Had the South remained in the Union, Slavery would have persisted into the 20th century. Lincoln repeatedly tried to bribe the south into staying by offering them assurances that slavery would be protected.

Beyond that, the numbers just don't work. To ban slavery would have required a constitutional amendment, and that would require a 3/4ths vote of all the states. With the 11 states that became the confederacy, it would require a Union of 44 states to override their opposition. (Not possible until 1896.)

If you add the five Union slave states to the 11 confederate states, it would require a Union of 64 states to override them, and we still do not have 66 states in the Union.

In other words, the Union would have kept slavery because there was no possible way of winning the legal battle to abolish it.

Therefore the war really wasn't about slavery. What it was about was the potential that the money pile coming into New York would end up in Southern ports.

There was 200 million dollars per year at stake immediately, and with the capital moving to Southern States, there was even greater financial threat to New York (and the Northeaster power barons who still run the United States today) in the possibility that the South would not only build competing factories with that money, but also that they would eventually provide the Western states with goods imported or manufactured in the South, and thereby cut off that source of money and power from the North East too.

The war was about money, and only about money. They created the propaganda that it was about "slavery" because they didn't want people to know the real motives for it. If they knew the real motives, the public would have been against it.

‘Had the South remained in the Union, Slavery would have persisted into the 20th century.’

slight correction; had the South not attempted to extend slavery to the western territories, it might have persisted into the 20th century...

‘Lincoln repeatedly tried to bribe the south into staying by offering them assurances that slavery would be protected.’

I take it you’re referring to the Corwin Amendment, the so-called 13th Amendment; you know, I’m certain, that presidents have no formal role in amendment processes; Buchanan superfluously signed the amendment as his parting shot...asserting that Lincoln introduced this as a bribe is a patent lie; so inform us of the other times he ‘repeatedly’ attempted to do this...

With the 11 states that became the confederacy, it would require a Union of 44 states to override their opposition. (Not possible until 1896.)

1896, huh...? I’m also sure you know the Amendment formally abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865, by 27 states, including 6 of those 11 seceding states...and btw, how do you arrive at the number of 44 needed Union states...?

DiogenesLamp: "Therefore the war really wasn't about slavery.
What it was about was the potential that the money pile coming into New York would end up in Southern ports...
...(the Northeaster power barons who still run the United States today)...
The war was about money, and only about money.
They created the propaganda that it was about "slavery" because they didn't want people to know the real motives for it.
If they knew the real motives, the public would have been against it."

More propaganda fantasy from DiogenesLamp.
In fact the Civil War was no more "about money" than any other war in history.
Sure, you (and Karl Marx) could say that all wars are "about money" because winners usually take what the losers had.
But no modern war is ever solely "about money" because normal people won't go to war over just money.
There are always other, "higher", reasons.
Sometimes those "higher" reasons are religious, i.e., 30 Years War, modern jihad, sometimes ideological such as National Socialism versus International Socialism on the Eastern Front of WWII, sometimes ethnic rivalries, "lebensraum", etc.

But almost never are the reasons for large-scale war purely economic numbers.
In the case of Civil War, Confederates did not go to war just to take money away from "Northeaster power barons", nor did those "Northeaster power barons" respond just to keep their income streams flowing.

Instead, Confederates wanted war to assert their independence, defend their sovereignty and protect their "peculiar institution".
Sure, all of that was worth money (i.e., $4 billion in slaves equivalent today to several trillion dollars), but ideals like "national honor" and "our way of life" meant more to individuals and their leaders than any spreadsheet numbers.

Likewise, the Union accepted war to defend itself existentially against very aggressive Confederate territorial claims over Union Border States, Western Territories and Unionist regions of Confederate states such as Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee.
Republicans like Lincoln also came to see in civil war the chance to first free slaves as "contraband of war" and then make the constitutional amendments which were otherwise impossible.
As to the claim that Northerners didn't care about slavery, when the opportunity came, Americans took it:

"In the beauty of the lilies[14] Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die* to make men free,[15]
While God is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!"

Nobody can claim that Lincoln himself was unmoved by such words.