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Right, slavery, it always comes back to slavery.

No, you always force it back to slavery, because you don't have a moral leg to stand on if it is debated on any other question.

The facts which are becoming clear to me is that the New England business interests saw an independent South as a grave threat to their finances, and they therefore used their influence to push Lincoln into forcing the South back into the Union.

Slavery was just the cover story. The real motive was money. Money the North would lose on shipping, acting as financial middlemen, lost from competition, lost from more free trade, and on tariffs revenues that would have to be made up by the North. (forcing them to carry their fair share of the load)

As was pointed out earlier by Charles Dickens:

"Union mean so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North."
...
"Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it."

Even an Englishman across the pond could see what was going on.

DiogenesLamp: "No, you always force it back to slavery, because you don't have a moral leg to stand on if it is debated on any other question."

And if pigs could fly, then we'd debate their aerodynamic qualities, but since they can't, we won't.
So Deep South Fire-Eaters declared their secessions, as they clearly explained, to protect their "peculiar institution" of slavery -- that's the fact, not even debatable.

No, Fire-Eaters did not start Civil War to protect slavery, nor did Lincoln accept their war just to abolish slavery.
But Lincoln's family had long been opposed to slavery, and when war-time conditions favored abolition, Lincoln fully supported it.

DiogenesLamp: "The facts which are becoming clear to me is that the New England business interests saw an independent South as a grave threat to their finances, and they therefore used their influence to push Lincoln into forcing the South back into the Union."

But Lincoln never recognized those states as having lawfully left the Union.
And especially in eight Upper South & Border States, Lincoln believed there were huge numbers of Unionists who had not been properly represented in Southern secessions.
He intended to protect their pro-Union interests.
So "forcing the South back into the Union," was not Lincoln's motive in early 1861.

Rather, the question for Lincoln was whether or how to accept the war being provoked, started, formally declared and waged by the Confederacy against the United States.
For that, Lincoln needed, and accepted, no advice from Northern economic interests.
Instead, as a lawyer and former Congressman, Lincoln's focus was Constitutional, legal, moral and political.
He did not agree that unilateral unapproved declarations of secession were constitutional, and would not accept Confederate military assaults on United States troops in places like Fort Sumter.
Northern economic interests had nothing to do with it.

DiogenesLamp: "Even an Englishman across the pond could see what was going on."

Many English elite supported the Confederacy -- enough that people like Jefferson Davis hoped for British diplomatic recognition.
That those Brits' views were skewed by economic concerns is understandable, but certainly does not make them correct.

"The Russian Minister in Washington Eduard de Stoeckl noted, 'The Cabinet of London is watching attentively the internal dissensions of the Union and awaits the result with an impatience which it has difficulty in disguising.'
De Stoeckl advised his government that Britain would recognize the Confederate States at its earliest opportunity.
Cassius Clay, the United States Minister in Russia, stated, 'I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was.
They hoped for our ruin!
They are jealous of our power.
They care neither for the South nor the North.
They hate both.'[10]"

Fortunately, wiser heads ruled in Great Britain, unlike those unfortunately ruling the CSA.