Dan is entangled in the pretexts:
[Slavery was] not one of the reasons, but the main reason. The declarations of secession themselves prove this. They broke away because they feared the loss of their slaves. The North rightly wanted to keep the union whole, and unfortunately the only way was through war. The South fired first.
But the main reason for me showing this stuff is to show to those who actually think the Civil War was not about slavery when slavery was at the heart of the break up of the Union.
To argue that the main reason for the Civil War was slavery is akin to asserting that the main reason for the German invasion of Czechoslovakia was the Czech’s suppression of the ethnic Germans of the Sudentland. After all, the Germans said so! Slavery was simply a pretext, primarily for the North, but to some extent also for the South as shown by the aforementioned secession articles. Nevertheless, the real reason for the Civil War was the same one behind nearly every other war in history, namely, who will rule?
It is sometimes amusing to see how inept historians from various disciplines attempt to cobble together a convincing rationale for a war or a series of wars, which they inevitably explain is due to something related to their own particular discipline. The Marxist always sees class struggle, the economist always finds an economic rationale and the good patriot dependably parrots a moral cause. But none of these notions explain how all of Europe knew that Charles VIII of France would go to war as soon as he was old enough, which he did because that’s just what young, powerful kings seeking glory were expected to do at the time. While there have been wars spawned by clashes of economics, ideology and religion, even a relatively casual perusal of military history will demonstrate that the vast majority of wars simply stem from the desire of one elite to expand its reach at the expense of another.
The North went to war against the South for exactly the same reason that the Emperor Hadrian sent Severus to Iudaea, to prevent a rebellious province from breaking away from its rule. The fact that keeping the Union together by force and exerting Federal power over the formerly sovereign Southern states, not ending slavery, was the driving force behind the war should be obvious for three reasons.
1. President Lincoln expressly stated so.
2. The Union made no effort to end slavery anywhere else in the world.
3. The four slave states that stayed in the Union were not attacked. Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri were all slave states and members of the Union. West Virginia remained a slave state after breaking with Virginia to stay in the Union and slavery continued in the District of Columbia itself until 1862.
The USA is not particularly concerned about slavery, nor has it ever been. There are still an estimated 27 million individuals enslaved around the world, but this does not trouble Washington at all. Does anyone truly believe that the federal government would be similarly indifferent to an attempt by a state to secede over taxes, immigration or marijuana laws today?
Central government always seeks to expand its power and usually attempts to resist any dissolution of its power. The fact that the Civil War is considered to have settled the question of secession once and for all – despite the fact that the complete absence of any trials for treason indicates that the Southern states were rightfully exercising their legal and Constitutional sovereignty to leave the Union – demonstrates that the sovereignty, not slavery, was the main reason for the Civil War.