The Civil War was based on a disagreement on slavery, but slavery was not the main issue. The Union opposed the South's economic system (slavery) and the South was not too happy about that so they began seceding from the Union. President Lincoln's main goal was to preserve the Union and to get the Southern states to come back. Slavery was just something that had gotten taken care of during the Civil War.
African Americans, carpetbaggers and scalawags comprised the Republican Party's largest Southern constituency during Reconstruction. The Scalawags were the white Southerners who backed the Reconstruction policies and were usually Union loyalists during the Civil War. Carpetbaggers were the Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era mostly for economic and political gains.
