Wrong direction -- it was the Republicans and Abolitionists who did that with their anti-slavery agitation and their moral crusade against slavery. The Republican platform confined itself to agitation against slavery in the territories, but everyone knew what the payload was, especially anyone who'd read Lincoln's speeches.
The Republicans were the ones who used the wedge issue of slavery to divide the agrarians and install a machine-political apparatus at the national level to serve the industrial and business interests exclusively.
It was called "the Gilded Age," and the South didn't do that. The Republicans did, all the way. It was the master strategy, and it worked. Just like in the Federalist period, the very determined and clever business class won, and the People got screwed. In addition, the People in the South ate dirt on their bellies for 50 years, and they still aren't first-class citizens yet. The Southern States still can't hold an election unless the Justice Department says so.