[achilles2000]

The South didn’t go to war to defend slavery. In his First Inaugural Address Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment, which had passed the Congress AFTER 7 Southern states had left:

Lincoln stated:

“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution has
passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government
shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. Holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Lincoln and his administration, then, were quite willing to make the Union “safe” for slavery forever. If slavery had been the issue for the South, the seven states would have returned because they had been given a complete, crushing win on the issue.

Slavery was a cause of tension among the states, but the South’s concerns over the tariff (which had a long history as a source of strife and had lead SC years earlier to contemplate nullification or leaving the Union (Jackson threatened to invade)and federal corporate welfare for Northern Industry, as well as other federalism concerns, were the main drivers. There was no “cause”, however. Federalism, tariffs, slavery, and other issues were all bound together in a way that led the vast majority of Southerners to want independence.

[Sherman Logan]

These arguments about the “causes” of the War tend to go in circles.

Secession was much like a divorce. The “cause” is that the two mates have grown to hate and despise each other. Unwinding the “real causes” under that hatred is not at all easy, and is more or less irrelevant anyway.

The actual demolition of the Democratic Party by southerners, which ensured Lincoln’s election, was not over the issue of whether slavery would be protected in the states. Even the Republican Party recognized it had no right to interfere within a state. The precipitating issue in the destruction of the united Democratic Party was a southern demand that a Federal Slave Code be passed, enforcing slavery in all territories.

IOW, contrary to southern mythology since the war, the issue was one of the South demanding expansion of federal power, not of resisting its expansion.

When northern Democrats balked, southerners walked out. Twice.

So the Corwin Amendment merely made explicit what almost everybody assumed at the time was already in the Constitution. It studiously avoided the issue of slavery in territories, the actual issue in the 1860 campaign.

Lincoln openly and strenuously opposed any regression on the issue of expansion of slavery into the territories.

As so often, the best explanation of the issue was from Lincoln.

“You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume IV, “Letter to Alexander H. Stephens” (December 22, 1860), p. 160.

Stephens, in February made the CSA veep, had been a friend of Lincoln when they served together in the House in the 40s.

In March the new veep made his famous Cornerstone Speech, in which he essentially agrees with Lincoln’s statement above.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Lincoln and his administration, then, were quite willing to make the Union “safe” for slavery forever. If slavery had been the issue for the South, the seven states would have returned because they had been given a complete, crushing win on the issue.

Ah, the Corwin Amendment. The south rejected it because it wouldn't guarantee slavery in the territories, which was the platform Lincoln was elected on. Lincoln, in turn, rejected the Crittenden Compromise, which was basically the same except that it guaranteed slavery in the territories.

[rockrr]

If slavery had been the issue for the South, the seven states would have returned because they had been given a complete, crushing win on the issue.

Yea, they weren't very smart, were they?

[BroJoeK]

achilles2000: "The South didn’t go to war to defend slavery."

As always, our pro-Confederates are working hard to throw sand in the eyes of the unwary.

In 1860 and early 1861, the Deep South was under the control of its Slave-Power Fire Eaters, who first demanded and got the splitting of their previously majority Democrat party, thus engineering Republican victory in November 1860.
Next they demanded and got declarations of secession from all seven Deep South states -- South Carolina through Texas.
Finally, they demanded and got a new Confederate government, which all the seceding states immediately joined.

All of this was done for one serious reason only: to protect their "peculiar institution" of slavery against Abraham Lincoln's "Black Republicans".

At that point -- by March 1861 -- "Fire Eaters" began to fade from center stage, and "moderates" like Jefferson Davis took over the new Confederate government.
Davis, of course, intended to protect slavery, but that was not his immediate concern in March 1861.
Davis' most pressing concern was to assert the sovereignty & rights of his new country, against the property and interests of the United States government.
He also intended to expand the Confederacy from those seven states of the Deep South into four states of the Upper South (North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas) and the four Border States (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware).
He also claimed US territories of Oklahoma, New Mexico & Arizona.

In short, in March 1861, Davis intended the utter destruction of the United States as it had been heretofore known.
But so far, he was having no success -- all eight of the Upper South and Border states rejected calls for secession.
Virginia was especially firm in opposition to secession.
So Davis was forced to act to save his Confederacy from failure & humiliation.

So he began, in March 1861 by ordering up a 100,000 man Confederate Army, and simultaneously ordering preparations for a military assault on Federal troops in Federal Fort Sumter.
His purpose was to not only take the fort, but also create conditions where Upper South slave-states were forced to decide which side to take in a war over slavery.
The results, as expected, caused Virginia to change from Union to Confederate, and along with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Still, the Border States did not secede, and so Davis did what he could to support Confederates in those Union states, including sending military hardware into Missouri.
At the same time, the Confederate Congress formally declared war on the United States -- May 6, 1861 -- such that by the time Virginia voted to join the Confederacy, it was also voting to join a formally declared war on the Union.

And remember, all this happened before a single Confederate Soldier was killed directly in battle with any Union force, and before any Union Army invaded a single Confederate state.

So the sequence of events can be summarized as:

1. The Deep South slave-power declared its secession in order to protect slavery.
   But secession alone did not cause Civil War, nor did forming a new Confederate government.

2. The Confederacy provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States, then sent military aid and eventually units into every Union state it could reach, for the purpose of asserting its own sovereignty while destroying or reducing the United States as a potential threat.

So the real question here is whether the Confederacy was utterly insane to pick a fight with a Union which had four times its white population, and ten times its industry?
The answer is, not necessarily -- when you consider that Southerners had decades of experience dealing with Northerners, knew the Northerners weaknesses, saw them as generally "Dough-faces" and didn't believe them capable of serious, bloody opposition.

Leaders like Jefferson Davis believed it would only take a few bloody battles to convince Northerners to give up the fight.
Based on that, they were eager to start a war they expected to quickly win.