My point was that the Civil War didn't start out to be about slavery.
Then you're wrong. The Southern states, by their own public declarations, left the Union over slavery.
It started out to be about states rights
No, that was the mechanism, as expressed in the legal right to withdraw from the Union, by which those protecting the long term slave interest attempted to forge a new association. The reason they did so was slavery.
and Lincoln, seeing that he couldn't really start and win a war over that issue, manipulated the issue of slavery into the mix.
Just contrary to the facts. Lincoln, as many in the South noted, had a public opinion that the Union would survive and slavery wouldn't. He was simply willing to accommodate a political necessity in the moment with an eye to holding the practice in check until it could die by a less violent means.
The amendment that ended slavery was unnecessary if all he wanted was to preserve the Union and was ultimately indifferent to the institution.
I proved your statement wrong. As they say, close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.
No, you didn't. I didn't say there was no monument, IMJ. Read it again. I was trying to make a point of consideration that you decided to make a literal point for a win that wasn't.
...The states of the South weren't "foe".
Of course they were. There was a war, you know. The guy on the other side of the war is your foe.
They were legitimate states demanding their rights under the framework of their Government;
I actually agree with that. Many who are glad the South lost the war will be among those to say that secession was likely legal.
rights which were denied them and are still being denied them.
Yeah, secession pretty much went off the table with that war. As did slavery, thankfully.
The Civil War didn't resolve that issue just as the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really get the black community of America what they needed.
The Civil War preserved the Union and ended slavery. So it was a pretty good day, all things considered. Sadly, it took another hundred years or so to seriously address full equality, a thing fought by most of the South, the South that trotted the old Confederate flag out to defy it.
...Let's be sure, too, to deface all the Confederate gravestones bearing the flag they fought for!
No one should deface a grave, but if they drop every Confederate monument into the sea I'll only feel sorry for the sea.