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But what was the splitting issue in the "union?" It was none other than slavery...."

I belive the tariff issue was of greater importance than the slavery.

Then why don't efforts to stop the fighting during the war -ever- mention slavery? Throughout 1862 President Lincoln pushed compensated emancipation and relocation schemes. Tariffs are not mentioned.

The prewar dialog was 90% slavery, 10% (or less) tariffs.

Walt

"Throughout 1862 President Lincoln pushed compensated emancipation and relocation schemes. Tariffs are not mentioned...."

It is a question of motivation and interpretation of Lincoln's actions and rhetoric. Most of the debate in the 1860 election revolved around the question of whether to extend slavery to some of the Western states. Lincoln's other statements of the topic of slavery to that point would lead any unbiased observer to conclude that ending slavery in the Southern slave states was not an issue of moral urgency with Lincoln. What was of concern to him was the new territories remain unemcubered so that Lincoln's version of mercantilism "internal improvements" ("the American system") could be implemented in these areas. In 1860, "internal improvements" meant "railroads"; Lincoln was also an ardent proponent of a National Bank and favored high, protectionist tariffs.

In 1860 Slave states faced a very threatening situation with respect to their immediate economic viability. Southern leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were convinced that there was nothing to stop the Lincoln administration from conducting a de facto campaign against slavery. The encouragement of servile insurrections and the non-enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act would be very destabilizing from an economic point of view. From a political point of view, then, it is understandable that
most of the rhetoric leading up to the 1860 election would revolve the issue of slavery.

The slavery issue was the most urgent issue, but it acted as a proxy for the broader issue: The Hamilton-Clay-Lincoln system of mercatilism versus the Jefferson-Jackson-Davis system of decentralized Agrarianism. Slavery was the proximate cause of separation but, IMHO it was not the ultimate cause. The use of the slave states as economic milk cows to fund grand infrastruture development schemes in the North, with the inqeuities that this scheme entailed, was the ultimate cause of separation.