Okay, I can see how that could mean Kansas led to the war, though it’s a rather roundabout way. Actually, I believe slavery was the Big Issue of the day, on everyone’s mind constantly and very often on their tongues. I also believe protecting it was the major motive for secession.
But here’s the rub: secession did not have to lead to war. Firing on Ft. Sumter probably did, but not necessairly the war we got. The war that was came about as a deliberate choice on the part if the North to force the South back into the union. The bent over backwards to accommodate secessionists on slavery, and slavery was absolutely not among the reasons it fought. Lincoln made that abundantly clear.
“As fir Dred Scott settlinv the issue of slavery expansion, on the contrary, it allowed a farmer to bring slaves into Iowa and work factory farms”
That’s exactly the point. It bade slaves legal property wherever they went, which means both free soil and popular sovereignty were trumped. Slavery won, in other words. It was over. Unless some abolitionist or party otherwise hostile to slavery built up enough power to overturn or bypass SCOTUS’. That is the specter haunting the South about Lincoln’s entirely northern victory. If they could out vote the South, eventually they could smack Dred down, rescind the fugitive slave law, or outlaw slavery altogether.
South Carolina could have avoided war through negotiation. Anderson forced everyone’s hand by moving into Sumter, which was not ready for a siege. Once Lincoln decided to re-supply the fort, David seems to have felt the need to take it. Davis had been manuvered into firing the first shot, which made his government technically a rebel. Lincoln’s calling for volunteers, of course, caused Virginian to leave the Union. But the decision to bring the capitol north to Richmond waas also a provocation. It would seem that there was the intention to make Washington the Capitol, since as a northern capitol it seemed indefensible.