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And why had those Southern states left the Union?

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At the end of the day the emancipation proclamation was issued by the executive branch of the government. That might give you a clue as to how Lincoln felt on the issue. Do you think that he would have drug the country into war if it weren't something as serious as slavery?

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The IMMEDIATE and ACTUAL cause of the war was the North invading and not allowing the South to legally secede.

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In case people forget...again...SLAVERY as an actual institution was ending anyway.

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That's why it is call the "War of Northern Aggression"

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Leaving Union legally and peacefully, for WHATEVER reason, does not equal war.

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Freed Blacks were around 8 times more likely to own slaves than whites.

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Money and power

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South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter not because of slavery, but to run the Federals out of their state.

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South Carolina felt the federal govt. was bound and determined to take away their rights as a state, one of them being slavery.

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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.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. (bolding is mine)

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

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South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter not because of slavery, but to run the Federals out of their state.

The Federals weren't there to abolish slavery, they were there because the Federal Govt. still considered SC as a state in the union.

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They even self-identify as "the slave-holding states". These states clearly believed the institution of slavery to be central to their cause. It's why they kept harping on it.

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The ISSUE was the constitution as written and interpreted at the time was being ignored by the Federal Government run by the Northern States, thus destroying the Southern economy. I love how "slavery" is mentioned a few times and the "constitution" is referred to numerous times...yet the Civil War was not based on a constitutional disagreement? Read your own quote.

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A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

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Apparently Mississippi seemed to think it was all about slavery.

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I love how "slavery" is mentioned a few times and the "constitution" is referred to numerous times...yet the Civil War was not based on a constitutional disagreement? Read your own quote.

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