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You can find editorials as you wish, but the southern states made it extremely clear it was SLAVERY they wanted, were determined to keep, and wished to expand. And there was no way in hell the northern states were going to fight a war to defend taxes.

Many in the north had no desire to fight for blacks, but NO ONE went to war to defend taxes on the south! Had it merely had been taxes, no war would have been needed.

The only state rights they felt a need to fight over was the right to extend slavery into other states. And to make sure their shrinking power due to the addition of non-slave states didn't ultimately result in a ban on slavery.

"California admitted as a free state in 1850. Where else?"

Based on the Missouri Compromise, things were starting to look bad for the slave owning states:

In 1854, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was superseded by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed white male settlers in the new territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. The result was that pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, leading to bloody fighting. An effort was initiated to organize Kansas for admission as a slave state, paired with Minnesota, but the admission of Kansas as a slave state was blocked because of questions over the legitimacy of its slave state constitution. Anti-slavery settlers in "Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850s were called Free-Staters and Free-Soilers, because they fought (successfully) to include Kansas in the Union as a free state in 1861.

When the admission of Minnesota proceeded unimpeded in 1858, the balance in the Senate was lost; a loss that was compounded by the subsequent admission of Oregon as a free state in 1859.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states_and_free_states

And it was only going to get worse with time. The non-slave states had a faster population growth, so the House was no longer in control by the South. And with every new non-slave state added, the Senate became increasingly non-slave. And the Electoral College already favored non-slavery, and it was only going to get worse. In time, a Constitutional Amendment banning slavery might have passed, or federal law requiring freedom for slaves.

There was only one thing the South had to fight over: the continuation of slavery, which in turn required expanding slavery into new states.

Notice: When Minnesota was added as a free state in 1858, and Oregon in 1859, the balance in the Senate went from 13:13 to 15:13. Kansas made it 16:13.

“Following the Leavenworth Constitution’s defeat, the Legislature again crafted a new document the following year, dubbed the Wyandotte Constitution. The convention assembled at Wyandotte - (Kansas City) on July 5, 1859. After much debate, a new constitution was submitted to the people for a vote which passed on October 4, 1859. It was then sent to the Federal Government for ratification. Following numerous long debates in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, President James Buchanan authorized Kansas to become the 34th state of United States on January 29, 1861. Only six days after Kansas was entered into the Union as a free state, the Confederate States of America formed between seven Southern states that had seceded from the United States in the previous two months.”

http://www.legendsofkansas.com/kansasterritory.html

Probably so as a remote cause. The question is why care what an independent Southern republic did if it did not attack the territory of the US. If the CSA annexed the Dominican Republic, fought a war with Spain and won the Spanish Caribbean possessions and also conquered the Central American states and expanded slavery to them. Slavery already existed in the Spanish Empire what interest would anyone in say Chicago have with it other than curiosity as to how the first multi-racial American country would manage the interesting challenges it had created? The USA would be pretty much rid of the color problem and he areas the CSA might annex would only be better off for it judging the splendid histories and current state of these places.

No, they....the few which even issued declarations of causes...made it clear that slavery was the PRETEXT under which they chose to secede. The northern states really had violated the compact wrt enforcing the fugitive slave clause of the constitution. They made it clear that that was not their primary concern however when they rejected Lincoln’s offer of slavery forever by express constitutional amendment in exchange for returning.

There was no way in hell the northern states were going to fight a war over slavery. When it came to money however, they were all in favor of not letting their cash cow slip away. So you are exactly wrong about that. It was ALL about money for the North.

Had the Southern States’ main concern been the spread of slavery then seceding without any territories of the US and thus giving up any chance to spread slavery would hardly have been their solution - yet that’s exactly what they did.

There was no real support for banning slavery in the North and even if there had been it takes 3/4s of the states to pass a constitutional amendment. There were 15 slaveholding states at the time. 3 X 15 = 45. So 45 is how many states would have to vote to ban slavery over the objections of the 15 slaveholding states. 15+45=60. In order to do so, that would require that there be 60 states. There are only 50 today. There was no prospect of banning slavery over the objections of the slaveholding states. None.

So now that we’ve dispensed with this little fairy tale that slavery was the concern, what really did concern everybody? MONEY! Tariff policy, government expenditures and federal usurpation of ever more powers it was never delegated by the states. The morrill tariff which eventually tripled tariff rates had already passed the house by the time of secession and was certain to pass the Senate. Buchanan was in favor (he signed it) and high tariffs was THE central plank of the Republican Party in 1860. The Southern states saw what was coming just like with the Tariff of Abominations and chose to get out before their economies were wrecked again.