I can believe that the common Southerner, that owned no slaves, would fight to keep them from being freed to roam the country and create mischief. More so than to keep them working in the fields. A scare tactic, if you will. Seems that is the reason that the red man went on a Reservation. I still fail to see how the war could be fought over freeing the black man unless both sides thought that it was the case, and they did not at the beginning, because just a few abolitionist were calling for that to happen. Certainly not Lincoln. The North was trying to control the South in lots of ways because they needed the crops to come through them. They did not want the Southern ports to send the cotton and other things to Europe without them making their dollar. They had already lost the income from the slave trade. miles
