Davis said that the threat to slavery was the cause for secession. Secession was the cause of the war.
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.” Union Colonel James Jaquess
“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.” Jefferson Davis
Davis rejects peace with reunion
https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/jefferson-davis-rejects-peace-with-reunion-1864/
Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war “was for the defense of the institution of slavery” (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim “demagogues.” Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted “the Confederates were not battling for slavery” and that “slavery had never been the key issue” (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).
Neither “love for the African” [witness the Northern laws against him], nor revulsion from “property in persons” [“No, you imported Africans and sold them as chattels in the slave markets”] motivated the present day agitators,”…... “No sir….the mask is off, the purpose is avowed…It is a struggle for political power.” Jefferson Davis 1848
“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Jefferson Davis 1860 speech in the US Senate
“The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control.” Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861
“Secession, southerners argued, would ‘liberate’ the South and produce the kind of balanced economy that was proving so successful in the North and so unachievable in the South.” (John A. Garraty and Robert McCaughey, The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877, Volume One, Sixth Edition, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, pp. 418-419, emphasis in original)
Davis made it quite clear that it was not about slavery.
200 million dollars per year in 1860 dollars was easily enough to trigger a war, and as i've explained to you and others previously, the financial losses to Lincoln's backers were going to be even worse than that.
European goods were going to flood the Western territories due to the greatly reduced import tariffs. The manufactures in the North East would have lost those customers .
If the Confederates had put their tariffs up around 40% like the Union, they would have probably been allowed to leave in peace. The North wouldn't have perceived it as a great reduction in their trade profits, and may have left the South alone.