DiogenesLamp:
"It's important to make sure everyone knows who was making the money, and who was about to lose it.
This clarifies the motives for why people launched a war." Right, for example, these people:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
Mississippi Reasons for Secession, January 1861
Clearly, the economics of slavery was first & foremost on Mississippi's mind in January 1861.
But what about Northerners, say, Doughfaced
Democrat President Buchanan?
Buchanan wrote colleagues in 1861: "the assault upon Sumter was the commencement of war by the Confederate states, and no alternative was left but to prosecute it with vigor on our part".[82]
He also wrote a letter to his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats, urging them to: "join the many thousands of brave & patriotic volunteers who are already in the field".[82]"
Former
Democrat President Buchanan was motivated by Fort Sumter, regardless of economics or slavery.
What about Deep South slaveholding planters?
"The South is invaded [by John Brown].
It is time for all patriots to be united, to be under military organization, to be advancing to the conflict determined to live or die in defence of the God given right to own the African"
--- Richard Thompson Archer (Mississippi planter), letter to the Vicksburg Sun, Dec. 8, 1859."
Not "all about" slavery?
What about the Confederate leadership?
"Mr. President [Davis], at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.
You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.
It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."[19]"
CSA Secretary of State, Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis just prior to Davis' order to "reduce" Fort Sumter.
Not "all about" slavery or economics, but why start war at Fort Sumter?
And what about President Lincoln?
"Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law..."
Lincoln, April 15, 1861, calling up 75,000 militia.
Not slaves, not economics, but
combinations too powerful".
What about those
"Northeastern power brokers" and their
"money flows from Europe"?
"The next day action in the [New York state] Assembly...
Speaker of the House Dewitt C. Littlejohn opened the day's session by presenting a set of resolutions that... openly declared Southern seizures of federal property to be 'treasonable' and charged that with the attack on the Star of the West 'the insurgent State of South Carolina' had 'virtually declared war'.
The resolution directed the governor to offer the president 'whatever aid in men and money he may require to enable him to enforce the laws and uphold the authority of the Federal Government.' "
Not about slavery, not about economics, but rather about Confederates'
"virtually declared war" against the United States."
And what did Northern commercial interests say?
"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....
Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....
Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review "
-- said to be from the 18 March 1861, Boston Transcript.
So how was slavery just
"pretext", even though protecting slavery was the only possible motivation for the vast majority of Confederates?
No, slavery was the
real reason for all but possibly the top 1% of 1% of Southern leaders.
That 1% may have hoped to leverage slavery to increase their own commercial & political powers, but the vast majority of Southerners didn't care about commerce or manufacturing, for example:
"We are a peculiar people, Sir! . . .
We are an agricultural people. . . .
We have no citieswe dont want them. . . .
We want no manufactures: we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. . . ..
As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want. . . .
But with the Yankees we will never tradenever.
Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their accursed cities.(1)
Texas Senator & Fire Eater Louis Wigfall to William Howard Russell, March 1861
Not so much about either slavery or "money flows from Europe" in early 1861.
And how did Jefferson Davis feel about all this?
Davis to CSA Gen. Bragg, April 3, 1861: "It is scarcely to be doubted that for political reasons the U.S. govt. will avoid making an attack so long as the hope of retaining the border states remains.
There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."
Well before the Battle of Fort Sumter, Davis
didn't care if
he started war, because that was
"overbalanced by other considerations", namely, the need for war to trigger Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas & other Border States to flip from Union to Confederacy.
So... for Davis, not so much about slavery.
Not so much about economics or "money flows from Europe".
Much more about how best to destroy the United States by getting more & more states to join his Confederacy.
And that project DiogenesLamp well acknowledges & supports, though considers of lesser importance than all-powerful "money flows from Europe".
You see, to a trained Marxist, economic self interest defeats mere morals & politics, every single time.