No doubt, many northerners did not consider their actions in order to end the slavery practices.
Again, the dicussion in not about what it was. Remove the word slavery from your argument and the discussion takes on another face. Virgina for one was the most industrialized of the slave states and minus the slavery issue would have lined up with the Northern states in any otherwise gendered secession. Without Virginia a secession would have been greatly different. Might have even been mutually agreed upon.
Slavery, if not the wedge, was certainly the glue that held the south together.
“Again, the discussion in not about what it was.”
I have misunderstood or misattributed an earlier statement; I don’t want to press my luck.
I don't agree. The Southern states would have had an economy that was substantially the same had there been no slaves. Its climate and soil were well suited to producing valuable cash crops. Those crops were going to get produced given the demand for them. In addition to having an export/import based economy, the Southern states had a similar view of the constitution and the nature of the relationship between the states and the federal government. They were all Jeffersonian Democrats. That is, they believed in limited government and decentralized power and balanced budgets and very limited government spending. The ethos in the North was entirely different. They looked to a stronger federal government (which they could dominate) from the start.