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My evidence is simply observational and a good understanding of human nature. When the South tried selling its cotton to Europe, for the world price, instead of the domestic priced enforced upon them by the Northern textile industrialists, they proceeded to block the South from doing so during the cotton blockade.

I know the South seceded over slavery, because what choice did they have if they understood that the North would agitate for the end of slavery but not compensate the South by paying a higher price for cotton? This would have bankrupted the Southern plantations. Being bankrupt, the Southern plantations would have to sell their land for whatever somebody was willing to pay. This would have opened the opportunity for the North to own the land and continue to grow the cotton at the lowest price possible to feed their textile mills.

I’m not claiming that this is what was happening, but it would fit with everything else that was happening.

The initial motivation for the North to oppose the secession of the Southern states was not concerned about the continuation of slavery. In fact, the Lincoln Administration proposed a constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed the continuation of slavery. The Southern States seceded because they were losing their former equality within the Union. Most immigration into the United States was going to the North, because of the growth of industry and the opening up of the frontier for small farmers. Therefore the North dominated the House of Representatives. With the admission of Kansas as a free state, the Senate would become Northern dominated.

By and large, Southern state governments were dominated by the plantation owners who fancied themselves as the inheritors of chivalry and honor. The dominance of the North in the US government meant that tariffs would be raised to protect domestic manufacturers. Southern plantation owners had become quite wealthy due to cheap labor from their slaves and and wanted to buy less expensive manufactured goods from Europe. At the time the South had little industry other than railroads to transport cotton, their main export, to textile mills in Europe. While the Southern secessionist use a lot of rhetoric defending their social order and the benefits of slavery, the real motivation for secession was economic. The ruling class in the South believed that they could conduct business with Europe, and that England and France would provide military support should the North invade.

I’m not claiming that this is what was happening, but it would fit with everything else that was happening.

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This was exactly what was happening.

In a way, that does does make the war about slavery, .but the North didn’t care about slavery, they cared about the free labor the south was getting and thus the lower prices they could sell their cotton.