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"....A reason to secede..."

Not "the" reason to secede. Those who say it "wasn't about slavery" and those who say it was "all about slavery" are both wrong. There were many reasons. The fact remains that Lincoln destroyed the Union to save it. What existed after the Civil War bore little resemblance to the original. A once "union of independent sovereign states" was now a union of subsidiary political units, no longer sovereign.

“The fact remains that Lincoln destroyed the Union to save it. What existed after the Civil War bore little resemblance to the original.”

Author Garry Wills, an admirer of Lincoln, said about the same thing when he wrote: Lincoln at Gettysburg “performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off, from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.”

Not "the" reason to secede. Those who say it "wasn't about slavery" and those who say it was "all about slavery" are both wrong.

Texas listed 12 reasons it was seceding in its Declaration of Causes impelling the state to secede. Eleven of the causes related to slavery. The 12th reason was that Texas felt the federal government was not spending enough money to deal with Indian savages.

None -- absolutely zero -- of the reasons had to do with taxes and tariffs. (I do believe that Georgia and Louisiana did mention tariffs, but again, the thrust of the reason to secede in those states was slavery.)

Agreed that there were multiple reasons on both sides.
What gets left out is the role of politics. If Lincoln had said the war was for freeing the slaves, how many northern white mothers and fathers would have sent their sons to die for black freedom?
Likewise, if the south had said this is a war to keep slavery, how many poor white southerners would have gone and fought to keep something they couldn't afford to have?
Like they said, “rich mans war, poor man's fight.”

The fact remains that Lincoln destroyed the Union to save it. What existed after the Civil War bore little resemblance to the original. A once "union of independent sovereign states" was now a union of subsidiary political units, no longer sovereign.

Secession destroyed the Old Republic. Whatever came next was going to be different.

Be honest. Do you really think that a country divided into two hostile nations was going to be the same as one that largely had a continent to itself?

Military budgets would increase. So would border controls. Internal security and espionage agencies would be formed.

Government would get involved in economic development to prevent each country from falling behind.

The idea that the Civil War gave us big government is an exaggeration. Most functions were still in state hands after the war as before. It would take 50 years or more after the war for that to change.

But do you really think that an exceptionally decentralized form of government would have survived into the 21st century?

And do you really think that country founded on slavery -- whether the US or the CSA -- could be devoted to liberty for very long?

Wouldn't the fear of the slave owners or the rage of the slaves eventually overwhelm constitutional protections?