Slavery was the diving issue for the leaders of the Southern Secessionist movement.
It was not the only issue but it was the key issue in the US Civil War.
Without the divisive issue of slavery dividing the politics north and south all the other issues would of been resolved via political consensus and comprise. Only the issue of Slavery was the “irreconcilable issue” that dived North and South
I’m pretty sure that secession was the irreconcialiable difference. The question that a state could nullify Federal laws, and that they could secede is not a question that can be tolerated by a Federal government intent on imposing it’s central authority.
Say what you want about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves that were not in Lincoln’s jurisdiction. That did not change until the 13th amendment to the constitution, passed after Lincoln’s assassination, in December of 1865. They weren’t given voting rights until 1868, the following election year.
Wrong. There are many scholarly (that is, written by other than elitist Yankee oligarch university professors) works, which document the history of increasing selective tariffs on export products of the South. The major one being cotton, exported to England’s factories vs. northern textile mills. Slavery was a capital issue in the production of cotton. In the absence of the tariffs imposed to force cheap cotton coming to the north, as opposed to the premium prices England was paying, the issue of slavery would have been compromised upon, and this was in the works. The condition of freed slaves demonstrates the lack of concern the north had for them. This war was a power grab, both of land and property of the Southern states and for control of the coming expansion to the West by the railroads, where slavery took on other ethnic suasions (Chinese coolies). Slavery was a subject of ambivalence to northern industrialists -they wished they could have such cheap labor. Disparity in population of South vs. North allowed this political power bloc to have their way. Through tariffs they were strangling the producers, and the Southern producing class had the means to secede, and did so to get away from these oligarchs.