It is completely false that the Civil War was not about slavery. For the South that was ALL it was about and pretensions that other issues were more important are just that, pretenses. Lincoln fought the war to save the Union but the South rebelled specifically and ONLY because Lincoln had won the election and they feared he would free their slaves. That was a lie but the Ruling Aristocracy had no challenge and controlled the Slaverocracy like totalitarian rulers.
Most Southerners were terrible undereducated and had no means of seeing through the lies about Northern oppression etc. fed them by their masters. They would not have been aware that the majority of the Presidents were Southern or that the South controlled the Congress and the Court. They would not have been aware that history was rolling over their degenerate society without pause or compunction or that their culture was based upon tyranny through and through.
There was never a less competent ruling class than the slavers (though Russians came close) or a more ignorant and gullible source of cannon fodder than those presented by the South. A bigger set of fools one cannot find.
The major cause of the Civil War was due to States Rights. This is what the war war fought over, however the major issue of States Rights was slavery.
Sounds a bit like dear Carole Simpson of ABC. IMO.
If you actually do research into the issue rather than take what you've been fed in school to be fact you will see that you are wrong. Samuel Wilberforce, Anglican Bishop of Oxford (son of William Wilberforce, the best known campaigner against the slave trade) sided with the south. Slavery was not even seen as an issue in this war until the north made it so, in an effort to gain popular and international support. A majority of Southerners, as well as General Lee believed slavery was wrong and accepted the idea of Gradual Emancipation, in which slaves would earn their freedom as well as money and capital through their work. This way when they were free they would be able to feed their families and make a life for themselves. Due to the abolitionist practices of the north, once slaves were free they had a hard time finding work outside of the work they had done as slaves, and had an extremely difficult time getting by.
Garbage. If the leadership produced out of each region is any indicator of their respective populations, the south wins hands down. Our most intelligent president, Jefferson, is a classic example. Like him or hate him, Calhoun is also consistently recognized by historians as the most intelligent of the famous senate "triumpherate" of Calhoun-Clay-Webster. Read the general speeches in Congress and you will find southerners quoting Shakespeare from memory and explaining complex legal concepts as opposed to venom-spewers like Sumner and Stevens who employed a far inferior form of rhetoric, namely inflamatory ranting. Heck, look at who the north supported in the 1860 presidential race when the south went to the extremely well educated and intelligent incumbent Vice President. Who'd they pick? An uneducated country bumpkin from Illinois with a gift for clintonian political skills and a disposition toward Artemus Ward rather than Aristotle.