“Wrong. The War Between the States was not fought over slavery.”
Nope. It its aggregate the value of 4 million slaves represented the largest privately held asset in the world in 1860: 4 billion dollars (2.4 TRILLION in 2010 dollars) and the southern politicians, nearly all slaveholders, knew as new states were admitted it was only a matter of time until slavery was outlawed by simple majority vote.
Secession was the only way to prevent that.
See, as you both stated, it is about property and property rights, and the valuation and compensation (if deprived of the property) thereof. Slaves were the property involved, but it is not about slavery, per se, but the monetary value involved.
Slavery was dying in the south by the time of the civil war. It was becoming uneconomical, and wasn’t a real popular institution anywhere. If some sort of agreement had been able to be reached concerning some sort of compensation to relinquish slaves, I think it would have been a moot issue in less than 10 years. Lincoln actually looked into doing something like this, but was unable to get anywhere with it, as the abolitionists would have nothing to do with it; and the south was beyond listening to anything the north said at this point. (Remember that Lincoln was of the school of thought that wanted to remove all the blacks, just not slaves, back to Africa. He wasn’t the “great emanicipator” that is taught in schools.)
It is a LOT more complicated than a war over slavery. Education does this great struggle a grave injustice by simplifying it to the good north and the bad south. But, the winners get to write history... Moral is: don’t lose.