The situation was sufficiently complex that all the issues involved influence the other issues involved. Therefore even when discussing the other issues, slavery is a part of those other issues. One may therefore conclude that those other issues were just slavery under another name, but that would be false.
Slavery was the bellwether issue, the one that other issues wound up congealing around.
Or put more accurately, other "issues" were invented as bullshit excuses to engage in treason and kill fellow citizens in order to protect the institution of slavery.
Had those other issues not existed, but Lincoln still sought to end slavery, then the Civil War would still have happened. Had Lincoln not committed to end slavery but those other issues still existed, the Civil War would not have happened. That makes slavery the only meaningful cause of the Civil War.
Not really. An economic analysis of the situation showed an inter-regional conflict was inevitable. People often don't notice and/or under-estimate the power of economic forces, but even though they exist below the surface they are very real and have dramatic effects. It is similar to how plate tectonics has the very real and dramatic effects such as volcanoes and earthquakes.
You could point to quotes by Southern politicians showing they did this over slavery, and I can point to quotes by Lincoln showing he didn't oppose slavery and only wanted to save the Union. The problem with both of those quotes is that they assume politicians are intelligent. It is particularly absurd to say that in the age of Trump. They are no more privy to economic analysis than any other person.
And yes, slavery influences economics, so the unintelligent person will say "see it was slavery after all", but it was much more than that.
It
was slavery. It was always slavery.
The original thirteen colonies almost didn't join together and present a united front in the War of Independence because of differing views over slavery. Their delegates to the Continental Congress decided to kick the can down the road and ignored the issue until after the War was won.
Then the delegates almost failed to create a Constitution because of the same divided opinions on slavery. They managed to craft a document that was acceptable to all, but it didn't resolve the issue to anyone's satisfaction.
Then the country began expanding as territories were settled and became states and the issue couldn't be ignored any longer. The slaveholding states had little power in the House of Representatives due to their low population density as compared to northern states. They had power in the Senate but they'd lose it if the number of free states was allowed to exceed the number of slave states. That's how we got the
Missouri Compromise, which restricted slavery to the southern half of the country while pairing a free state with a slaveholding one so the balance of power in the Senate could be maintained. That worked fairly well for about 20 years but by the mid 1840's it was starting to fray and crumble. Another compromise bill, the
Compromise of 1850, was passed in an attempt to stave off open conflict but it couldn't fix the core issue. And then Nebraska and Kansas came along.
The
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 contained a clause that allowed the citizens to decide if their states would permit or ban slavery. Kansas became a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery factions. People were murdered, farms burned to the ground, and armed militias roamed the territory looking for political opponents to terrorize. For a while there were two territorial governments, one in Topeka and the other in Lecompton, each declaring the other illegitimate. The mayhem grew to such an extent that people started calling the place
Bleeding Kansas.
I won't go into detail about all the panicked scrambling in Washington D.C. during the 1850s but suffice it to say the Whig Party collapsed under the strain, and out of the ruins arose the pro-expansion, anti-slavery bane of the Democrats, the Republican Party. Slaveholders and plantation owners in southern state Legislatures saw the threat to their wealth and issued an ultimatum: if a Republican won the election of 1860, the South would secede. Abraham Lincoln won the election running as a moderate from a swing state. Seven states seceded before he was even sworn in to office. Lincoln's Inaugural Address contained a pledge not to interfere with slavery in the south and an appeal to allow "the better angels of our nature" to prevail, but it didn't matter. Slave holders knew that it was only a matter of time before the US abolished slavery, and the only way to retain their slaves was to form a government devoted to that cause. And thus the Confederate States of America was born, with the proviso that "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed".
The Civil War might have been avoided if shots weren't fired at Fort Sumter and if US citizens were allowed to retain their citizenship while both governments hashed out a treaty, but it's not likely. There was too much money and power at stake, and all of it rooted in slavery.
It was
all about slavery.
