Hey wait a minute,
I"m the one who's despicably cynical around here. Back then, those who were the poster boys and girls for abolitionism (like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, even that dipstick John Brown) wouldn't fit Bedell's description but just like today, those who benefit the most economically aren't the ones you see and associate with that moral stance anyway. Those names I just mentioned, whether you agree with them or hate them were idealists who were fighting for what they believed in.
The wealthy industrialists, bankers, shipping magnates, etc., (those are the ones Bedell was referring to I believe) had no problem making millions from either the South's terrible practice of slavery or their own version, ie using the millions of immigrants coming to this country every year, paying them pennies and making them and their families live in the filthy tenement "projects" where their children died from playing in the filthy streets that were full of diseases. Those were the men making millions from both forms of forced servitude. They didn't want the South to secede because they had their sweetheart system set up so they'd win either way. They paid lip service (when they had to) to the abolitionist viewpoint to make them think they were on their side, then they'd go back to their mansions and count their money, ala Scrooge McDuck or Mr. Burns while the abolitionists marched for change.