Very good point. Countries winning wars or staying together or winning independence can have economic consequences, but that doesn't mean that economic reasons were always the main cause of wars. German domination of the world would have changed things for everyone. America's defeat of Germany and Japan made us the world's top country, but that doesn't mean we went to war to become the world's top country.
If we are going to talk about materialistic motives for war, the slaveowners feelings that slavery was threatened by a Republican administration and that the cotton boom was likely to go on forever have to be considered. They can't simply be turned into a desire for freedom. And we can't just pretend that the Confederates were fighting against LGBTQ and today's other modish causes. That's imposing the issues of our own day on the past.
Would be a good point except for the fact that the money situation was well recognized before the war. It was not an unintended consequence of a war, it was, as I have long argued, the very reason for the war.
We cannot be expected to believe that the Northern population had always been enamored of the idea that "the Union must be preserved!" As I pointed out earlier in the thread, Massachusetts and Connecticut had threatened secession themselves back in 1812. The evidence indicates the Northern people were just fine with the South leaving and had no concerns about it at all until the businessmen among them started looking at the money issue.