If that's all they wanted, why didn't they just stay in the Union?
If that's all they wanted, why didn't they just stay in the Union?
Because they wouldn't have been left alone, hello!
Lincoln was embarked on a war policy to "reorganize" the South and abolish slavery -- and also to institutionalize Clay's "American System" and the Republican Party.
The idea was supposedly John Quincy Adams's. In the event of a civil war, the victorious faction could seize control of the beaten States' governments and "reorganize" them as conquered marches. It was a way around the Constitution, essentially.
However, the strategy did require ..... a war.