Watching Ken Burns' Civil War Documentary

I started watching Ken Burns' Civil War documentary series in Netflix. I think this subject is a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of modern American Politics, American Wars and even the American Psyche.

The willingness of a huge population to fight a war for a fundamentally unjust cause;

the ability of even honorable people to rationalize their unjust cause in the name of patriotism and in the name of rights;

that so many people fight so hard for for their rights to deny rights for other people;

the willingness of the people to continue tragic and costly wars that cost huge number of lives;

patience (or helplessness) of the people in putting up with feckless generals who make stupid and arrogant mistakes resulting in the death of hundreds and thousands of people;

the generals with huge political ambitions and the corrupt ones who blur the lines between war and politics and business;

that the war is really cruel, for it was really sad and gut wrenching to hear about some of the battles and its causalities.

And sadly, every one of the above statement is still true and is being clearly demonstrated up until the very latest wars and the very latest politics of today...

I thought that the political success of Lincoln during the Civil war was much more impressive than the military success of the Civil war generals. Union lost more people than the Confederates and the Confederates had more impressive military victories and the Union had more bone headed losses. How did he keep his support through the war and manage to get reelected impressively for the second term in the middle of such uncertainties? And I'm still not clear about why the Union decide to fight this war with such conviction. So far, it doesn't appear to me that most people in the Union were prepared to spend so much money and lives to free the slaves. So why did they fight so much?

Need to finish watching the series and perhaps start reading Lincoln biographies...