Contrary to what we have been told the American Civil War's key aim, and the reason it was fought, was not to abolish slavery but to impose a new economic system in the country. In the industrial age, slavery was an anchronism and the new capitalist system was needed for America to compete with European imperial powers, We reveal how this was done.

The American Civil War: A Clash of Economic Systems and the Birth of Corporate Power

1. The Elite’s Wealth-Driven Vision

From its founding, America was shaped by a wealthy elite who enshrined profit as the nation’s guiding principle. The Constitution, written by and for propertied men—many of whom owned slaves—established a legal framework that protected wealth accumulation above all else. A self-serving interpretation of Christianity emerged, framing material success as divine favour and poverty as moral failure. This ideology justified exploitation, from slavery to the ruthless expansion of industrial capitalism.

The Civil War was not, as often mythologized, a moral crusade against slavery. It was a violent struggle between two economic systems:

• The Agrarian South: Built on slave labour, feudal land ownership, and limited industrialization. The South’s wealth was tied to cotton, a crop so lucrative that enslaved people were worth more than all U.S. factories and railroads combined.
• The Industrializing North: Fuelled by wage labour, mechanization, and financial capitalism. Northern elites saw slavery as an obstacle to modernization—not out of moral concern, but because industrial capitalism required mobile, exploitable labour, not fixed human property.

1. The Manufactured Moral Cause

Abolitionists, though sincere in their fight against slavery, unwittingly served the elite’s agenda. Their activism provided the North with a righteous veneer for what was fundamentally an economic war. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863) was a tactical move, not a humanitarian one:

• It only freed slaves in Confederate states, leaving Union-aligned slave states untouched.
• It crippled the Southern economy by depriving it of its labour force while bolstering the Union Army with 180,000 Black recruits.
• It secured European support by reframing the war as a fight against slavery, discouraging Britain and France from backing the Confederacy.

The Gettysburg Address further mythologized the war, invoking "government of the people, by the people, for the people"—a slogan that ignored the reality that the war was fought to decide which elite would control America’s future.

1. Reconstruction and the Betrayal of Black Freedom

After the war, the brief period of Reconstruction (1865–1877) saw Black Americans gain voting rights and political representation. But this progress was swiftly dismantled:

• The 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime, creating a new system of convict leasing—where Black men were arrested on petty charges and forced into labour camps.
• Black Codes and Jim Crow laws reinstated white supremacy, while Northern industrialists abandoned racial justice in favour of economic reconciliation with the Southern elite.
• Violent backlash (Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, and massacres like Tulsa 1921) ensured Black Americans remained an exploited underclass.

1. The Simultaneous Genocide of Native Americans

While the Civil War raged, the U.S. government waged a second civil...