You don't know what the term scorched earth means.

Lincoln was a bit of a racist, and quite frankly it worked out well that a embittered southerner assassinated him, that way we had the slaves freed and no deportations of newly freed black Americans.

The Civil War was 100% fought because of slavery. It was fought because the US was expanding West, and the South wanted the slavery to spread there. The North was against this notion.

When the abolitionist Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the South Carolina began succession and six more states followed. A month later in February, when the Union refused to give up military installation to the newly formed Confederate government on confederate lands, the Confederacy attacked, and the civil war began.

All cause over slavery. Period.