You are confusing me - first you said slavery was the ONLY issue in the civil war, now you are saying it was not an issue at all
Please tell me what started the civil war, then... because I am confused now
I said slavery was the only issue in the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Which it was.
Slavery was the main, but not only, reason for secession, which course occurred several years after the L/D debates.
Secession led to war. War, and the demands of fighting it, eventually created a determination to destroy slavery.
The north went to war to protect the union and ended up freeing the slaves. The south went to war to protect the institution of slavery and ended up losing everything.
The abolition of slavery was not a serious issue in 1860 -- no reasonable person thought at the time it was even possible to do so and all recognized that the Constitution allowed slavery.
But the expansion of slavery into the territories was the major, and in fact the only issue in the election of 1860 and it was again acknowledged that the Federal government did have the Constitutional authority to forbid it.
Expansion not a new issue then. The issue of expansion had caused division, and even calls for secession all the way back to The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and again with Compromise of 1850.
With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act followed by the Dred Scott decision in the 1850s, the sides were basically drawn in stone, and there was no longer any room for compromise. The Southern states demanded unlimited expansion of slavery and the North opposed any further expansion.
Lincoln ran of a 'Free Soil" platform and his only real promise was to stop the further expansion of slavery.