"Most white northerners at the time [1860] viewed blacks as inferior. . . .Only a few [white northerners] held strong opinions about slavery. . . A vocal minority of northerners were abolitionists . . . Some white northern bankers, mill owners, and merchants earned a lot of money on southern cotton and tobacco or by trading or transporting enslaved people. They were sympathetic to Southern plantation owners and did not want to abolish slavery."