“LOL - The actual Civil War lasted 5 years. It has lasted at least 12 years that I know of here on FR. The outcome remains the same.”
Good grief. I wonder what the states would have achieved for the southern people without an economy solely dependent on slavery to succeed. I am an agrarian in my heart, but something of a Federalist in practice. It is just too big a country.
That's fairly easy to answer through a comparison between the North and the South's relative economies at the time. The Northeast was becoming industrialized, the Northwest remained more agrarian yet was itself becoming more industrialized as well. The South remained primarily agrarian. Westward expansion for the North meant a greater market for its goods and services. For the South it meant more in terms of sustaining its most valuable crop.