The was was about STATES RIGHTS, which they were promised when they signed the constitution.
Slavery was just the vehicle. It was a just cause, don’t get me wrong- but the issue was TELLING states what people had to do. Like buy health insurance.
In reality the North would have been devastated financially if the south withdrew- that why the war was fought about keeping sacred “The Union” (genuflect)
Own another human being. Thanks Southern Democrats. Thanks a whole bunch. Thanks for the worst war in American history.
Revised figures have put the number of dead as a result of “Jeff Davis's Excellent Secession'' at 700,000 thousand Americans.
700,000 Americans dead in four years, 60,000 of them civilians.
Those are some numbers.
Except that nobody was telling the South it had to do anything in November 1860 when Fire Eaters began organizing to declare secession and then (May 6, 1861) war against the United States.
An alleged Union assault on slavery was the only cause powerful enough motivate a majority of patriotic Southerners to reject the Federal union.
"Unfair tariffs" or Federal infrastructure spending weren't going to do the job.
Fire Eaters needed slavery to convince most Southerners secession was their only choice.
And for that, reality didn't matter -- "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans" was all they really needed to say.
500 million per year in Southern goods sent North, and 200 more million in Southern goods sent to Europe, and then back through Northern ports like New York.
The Northern masters had total control over this money flow. Southern independence threatened that control. It would have destroyed their wealth.
Of course they got the government to subjugate the Southern states. The government was in the pocket of the Northeastern wealthy, just as it still is to this very day.