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I've always liked a kind of Marxist approach, how the industrial middle classes of the North clashed with the land owning aristocracy of the South. Slavery was a wedge issue, but in reality it was the balance of power tilting geographically, economically and culturally which even put the slavery issue on the table.

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Interestingly enough, Marx wrote an adulatory letter to Lincoln:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

I agree, though, that the Marxist story behind the Civil War is a compelling one.

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