By the mid-1850s, almost all of the Northern States had already outlawed slavery, and almost all blacks in the North were free.
Northern Democrats who favored slavery were called Copperheads, named after the poisonous snakes.
The Copperhead movement attracted southerners who had settled north of the Ohio River, the poor, and merchants who had lost profitable southern trade.
Additionally, there were some industrialists in the North who believed that slaves could provide the manufacturing plants in the North with the labor that they so desperately needed.
Confederate views:
The Confederate States were in favor of slavery, mainly because their economy relied on slave labor.
The southern economy was based on huge plantations for farming and planting cash crops, including cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, cattle grain and vegetable plots.
In total, there were about four million slaves working in the Confederate States in 1860 and three hundred and fifty thousand people owned slaves