The articles of secession are very, very blatant about the fact that they were seceding because they wanted to be able to keep slavery going for the rest of time and not for any other reasons, despite the arguments you hear about how if we’d only let them get rid of it at their own pace, they’d have abandoned it by themselves.

You are absolutely right about that, but never forget that although the confederacy was fighting for slavery, the union wasn’t fighting against it, rather it was fighting for control. There were plenty of instances of slaves still kept in union allied states that were only attended to after the war was done.

Yeah, I’ve always seen it as the Confederacy fighting to preserve slavery, while the Union as a whole was ambivalent on the subject.