You nailed it. Leaders in the south had aspirations of perpetuating and expanding slavery and would do ANYTHING to stop those who opposed them. The writing was on the wall regarding slavery but they chose to be belligerent and traitorous as they cooked up their scheme to rip our nation apart.
Their despicable actions plunged our entire country into a miserable war that cost 600,000+ lives. That is the legacy of the confederacy and revisionism about crops and tariffs is simply a smokescreen.
Apparently that makes me a troll.
If you're really interested in elevating the discourse you'll stick with the facts and forsake the ad hominem attacks and Alinsky tactics.
Love is in the air..... Long lost friend there?
ANYTHING? Including leaving the Union and leaving the Midwestern and Western territories in possession of the North, which is what the South did? Leaving those territories in possession of the North really stopped those who opposed the extension of slavery there, right?
Let's reverse the positions of the North and South. Ah, come on; you can do it. What would the North have done in that case? Here is a comment about such a reversal of roles from the March 5, 1861, Brooklyn Eagle (the largest evening newspaper in the country back then):
Let us suppose that the South had proposed this doctrine, had declared war against free soil as Mr. Lincoln and his party did against slave soil, and laid down a platform to exclude free labor from the territories, and place it in the way of ultimate extinction in the States, and that they possessed a numerical majority of the population and elected a Rhett or Yancey on that platform, as President of these States, would the North have any cause for apprehension? ... Reverse the position of parties, and the North would spurn the yoke of a free soil extinguishing president forced upon it by slaveholding votes against the united vote of every free State with as stern determination as was evinced by the most headlong of the Gulf States.