Let's have a look, shall we, at the South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession:
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
But sure, slavery was only brought into it by Northern liberals, well into the war.
You are not recognizing the initial issue, just a symptom. The initial issue from the get-go was States Rights verses a strong Federal Government.
The battle between the States and the Federal Government was the true issue. Slavery was only ONE symptom. Others included Interstate Commerce, etc.
The Civil War was not a one issue (slavery) fight.
The falsehoods are not when slavery was brought into it. The falsehoods are that the war was about slavery.
It’s easy to see as an outsider what went on there, but most people don’t seem interested to find out.
It’s a shame because that was the beginning of the end. It was the beginning of consolidated power in a central location, and the usurping of the rights of individual states.
The great majority of the North could of cared less about the slaves in the South, after all, they were willing to amend the Constitution to make slavery permanent and not subject to further amendments (see Corwin amendment). The war was initially a war of subjugation and morphed into “a free the slaves” war to satisfy Northern sensibilities.