The Abolitionists would have gotten what they wanted without a war. It was a by-product of the WBTS. Abe Lincoln and the other leaders of the Republican Party wanted to alter the U.S. Constitution, to harshly mitigate the authority of the soveriegn states. Setting up South Carolina at Ft. Sumter and instigating a war of attrition worked well for them. I try to convince my Northern friends that everyone who loves the Constitution lost that War and every Constitutionalist living today should wish there had been a different outcome.