On the contrary, for those pushing succession it was always about slavery at the bottom of everything else. They knew Lincoln's position was to allow no more slave states, and they believed if they didn't suceed free states would have such a numerical advantage in Congress that it would ultimately lead to abolition. Whether that was actually Lincoln's design is debatable. Whether the leaders of the secessionist movement believed it was is not. Just read the speeches of the secessionist leaders.
There were rules agreed to at the creation to the Union. Who violated them? Do serious men take their rules seriously? Does might make right? Because you believe your cause is more just? Would Obama be right to invade “non-gay” states that resist gay marriage? According to Union logic, yes, because leftist “morality” supersedes everything else.
So, would not the Southern States, whose economy depended on slavery be justified in leaving a Union they had joined voluntarily with slavery a basic foundation of it, when a certain segment decided to fundamentally change the basic axioms of the agreement?
Answer carefully. Because the Obamunists are equally outraged over "white privilege" "anti-gay" feelings, and a cornucopia of imagined outrages. If you resist are you a rebel traitor?
I believe the Civil War was the price we had to pay in blood for the sin of slavery in a free republic.
That said, my studies say the route to war was not over the issue of slavery itself - but rather the right of individual states to resist an encroaching federal power.
Hinton Rowan Helper’s idea to impose a federal tax on slaves and then cotton itself - was seen as a mechanism to do two things: tax slavery out of existence, and punish states that did not follow Federal dictates - (Obamacare anyone?)
The South saw this as an infringement on their 10th Amendment rights and the argument became centered on Federal power versus State power. It ultimately led to the decision by the Federal beast that states had no right to resist nor secede.
Much of what Robert E. Lee wrote as to the reasons for his refusal to take command of the Union Army corroborate that fact.
When you consider homosexual marriage, ObamaCare and the Alphabet agencies running roughshod over individual and state rights - the precursors to the civil war, are now a precedent for the Federal Beast to do exactly what it did in 1861 - and call out troops to enforce it’s demands if needs be. Wherefore anyone opposing the Federal Beast would be considered a ‘traitor’ and a ‘rebel’.
And such is the rhetoric coming out of the current Federal Beast and the Oligarchy that rules us all.