This debate about the constitutionality of slavery has been reignited by antiracist interpretations of Lincoln’s war as having been motivated primarily by abolitionist fervor. To support that view, the impression is given that abolitionism was the prevailing ideology of the Northern states and the primary reason why they supported Lincoln’s war. That error is arrived at by conflating distinct issues—beginning with the false premise that the South seceded to defend slavery, followed by wrongly reasoning that the South must, therefore, have fought purely in a bid to defend slavery, and from there it is a short step to concluding that the North must have been fighting to end slavery.
It looks like revisionist history works all sorts of different ways, not only left but right, too, as well as up and down. For instance, Rhode Island was heavily involved in the slave trade throughout its duration in the USA and only stopped with the civil war.