[WVMnteer]

It’s pretty clear that the ideas of “independence” in the South were more of a PR move after their real desires failed to materialize. What the South needed was federal protection of their slave-based economy. The Free States didn’t have to be anti-slavery to devastate the South. A simple policy of “We’re simply not getting involved in slavery” was enough. Hence, the Fugitive Slave Act. Hence Dred Scott.

And the northerners understood what this would lead to long-term: Slave labor in the north. The battles in Kansas weren’t fought on behalf of banks in New York. They were fought on behalf of simple laborers who knew that slave labor would ruin them.

The South needed centralized power to protect their interests. Without that, the entire region was one large uprising away from becoming Haiti.

[DiogenesLamp]

What the South needed was federal protection of their slave-based economy.

You're going to have to explain that. They were the ones with the money. Other than the fact that the FedGov was taxing the sh*t out of them to pay for Northern growth, and other than the fact that the Northern coalition had enough votes in congress to pass laws that virtually guaranteed New York a cut of the South's production profits, they didn't need Federal protection. They need Federal taxes to be lowered and Federal rules that hurt their profits suspended.

Unfortunately for them at the time, the FedGov was very protectionist, because they wanted to build up Northern Industrial power.

They were fought on behalf of simple laborers who knew that slave labor would ruin them.

Now this part is exactly right. Northern sentiment against slavery was primarily focused on slaves as competition for Northern labor. The people who opposed slavery strictly on moral issues were a very small minority. The vast number of Northern people hated slavery because they saw free slave labor as a dire threat to their paid wages labor.

If it were legal in their state, they would have a much more difficult time trying to earn a living. Slaves were unpaid "scabs", and they not only hated them as a people, but they hated them for the threat they represented to wage earners.

The South needed centralized power to protect their interests.

And how would "centralized power" protect their interests? What would it do for them?

[x]

The South needed centralized power to protect their interests. Without that, the entire region was one large uprising away from becoming Haiti.

Good point. You'll hear people saying that Lincoln was willing to offer never to do anything against Southern slavery, so therefore secession and war couldn't be about slavery.

But the secessionists didn't trust him. They didn't believe that their slave property would be secure in a country that was half-slave and half-free.

Plus, they had unrealistic expectations about how a new Southern Confederacy could expand slave territory into Central America or the Caribbean.

[BroJoeK]

WVMnteer: "And the northerners understood what this would lead to long-term: Slave labor in the north."

Lincoln said another decision like Dred-Scott would have that effect, but in reality, Dred-Scott already made it lawful for slave-holders to take their "property" permanently into non-slave states, to use as they saw fit: growing tobacco, for example.

That was the sudden realization which turned previously tolerant-of-slavery-in-the-South Northern Democrats into suddenly abolitionist-lite Republicans in 1860.
Thus the Democrat's 1856 "Blue Wall" of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana & Illinois switched to red-Republicans in 1860.

1856's "Blue Wall" turned red-Republican in 1860: