Thank you for your service

Little known fact- the Confederacy put a balanced budget requirement in their Constitution, one the Southern States fought for in the US Constitutional Convention but the Northern States refused. Succession was about many more issues than just slavery, Lincoln was a devoted abolitionist, but chose to use slavery for political expediency to justify the Civil War. Optics, always optics. Great meme, pissed me off when the antifa asshats were pulling down Civil War memorials and destroying the reputations of the fine men of the south (Robert E. Lee and so man others). Only around 380,000 people owned slaves in 1860- Henry Gates of Beer Summit fame exposed dozens of Holywood elites as descendents of slave owners with his Finding Your Roots show on NPR. Hillarious to watch Ted Danson on that one.

Not sure you would call Lincoln an abolitionist. He was at odds with the abolitionist in the Republican party. He also clearly said that preserving the nation was more important than abolishing slavery. His views would be considered racist today.

Lincoln"s early career articulated the abolitionist movement very clearly, when they did 2 hour long speeches he spent hours discussing it. When he was elected, his hope was to resolve the problem legislatively and that all changed when the south seceeded. That's when he was faced with the priorities you describe.
It wasn't the first time, in order to even have a United States there were several compromises during the Constitutional Convention, the most demonized being the 3/5ths compromise. Agitators try to say the founders were sooooooo racist calling an african only 3/5ths of a man. All it takes is to read it and the history.
Regarding the census and appropriation of congressional representation, the south wanted slaves to count as full citizens. The north didn't want them counted at all so that legislatively they had the numbers to end slavery. If the north had not proposed and the south accepted that slaves would be counted as 3/5ths of a citizen (not a human being), the south would not have joined the union and there would have been two nations, one slave and one free sharing the continent. The north knew they would eventually outgrow the agrarian south and could end slavery. As Lincoln said at Gettysburg- four score and seven years.
Escaped and free former slave Frederick Douglas, after his anger over his enslavement had subsided, said that the 3/5th compromise was the most brilliant thing done by the founders, it guaranteed an end to slavery.
And sadly everything is considered racist today.

I haven't seen the show but will try and find it, nice additional info, thank you for that. I learned while in the military just how many of our modern tactics the confederacy developed. Pound for pound they were the fiercest fighting force the Americans ever fielded. Only an idiot would think they all fought that hard for the right to own another man. This country's education system is a joke.

Lots of history has been edited in school textbooks. Making people stupid and compliant is what our school system does.

The overall problem with the South was that they were Democrat majority. Then as now people voted stupidly.