[Pearls Before Swine]

Whether or not the CW was destined to occur is not going to be settled by reference to founding documents. The differences between the North and South were great, and people were angry. And, there’s no going back.

So, I don’t want to argue at any length about projections of alternate histories.

There’s only opinions, no definite conclusions to be reached. Especially in this case, where what’s done was done over 150 years ago.

[DiogenesLamp]

The differences between the North and South were great, and people were angry.

People were not angry. Most Northerners felt that the South should be left to go it's own way in peace. No one had any desire to use force to stop them. Horace Greeley (editor of a Newspaper in New York) said this:

To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measure designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.

From the Tribune, Nov. 26, 1860.

He also urged the government to tell the South:

"Wayward sisters, depart in peace."

The North was against a war to keep them in until Lincoln deliberately engineered a confrontation to start a war. He deliberately inflamed the passions of the people, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

Why did Lincoln insist on doing this? What you didn't know is that the war was about money. This money.

What you also don't know is that 73-82% of the trade money represented by that pile of coins on New York would have shifted to the South, because the South was producing about 80% of all European trade with the United States.

Lincoln and his New York backers were not going to let that money go.