Did it ever occur to you that people sometimes act on pretexts...ie they do what they wanted to do (for other reasons) anyway and then find a reason to justify what they wanted all along anyway?
Oh and of course only 4 states listed causes and 3 of those 4 listed several causes other than preservation of slavery and several states - including Virginia and the whole Upper South - obviously did not secede over slavery because they were happy to remain in so long as the federal government did not try to impose itself by force on states that no longer consented to be ruled by it.
Its silly to claim that secession or the war were “about” slavery.
Georgia: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.” - Second sentence.
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world.” - Second sentence
South Carolina: “We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”
I’ve already discussed Texas.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Alabama: “Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama...”
Virginia: “and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States.”
Kentucky: “a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatic”
It is ridiculous to pretend slavery was not the root cause - slavery, the defense of it, and the desire to be able to move to California or elsewhere and take one’s slaves with you.
It was about “states rights”, but the only right being violated was the right to expand slavery into other territories. In an attempt to draw the states back in, or to keep the border states from leaving, the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution was proposed:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
It passed Congress and Lincoln said, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service ... holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
But by that time (March 1861), the south wasn’t interested in compromise.