It also shows that the abolition of slavery was infact an agenda of the Republican party at the beginning of secession and before.

You may well be right here. It seems that, even with all the other issues like state's rights, etc., that slavery was the root cause of it all. You HAD to come down on either the Northern or Southern side of the fence on this most critical of all issues, which more or less determined how you came down on all the rest.