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jmra wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

jmra wrote:Slavery was a flashpoint used by the Northern states to rally support for the war with the South. Ending slavery was without a doubt war worthy, but it was not the driving motive behind the governments desire to keep the union together. The North went to war with the South in order to preserve the Union for the simple fact that the North needed the South much more than the South needed the North. The South was a cash cow for the North, one that they were not willing to give up.

OK, help me understand your position. Every one of the seceding states claimed that they left over slavery. http://www.civilwar.org/education/histo ... auses.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is from Georgia's declaration:

The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution.

The Republicans were elected specifically to abolish slavery. They had a two-fold plan; starve slavery out by making all the surrounding states non-slave states, prohibit the import of slaves, make life difficult for the south economically, etc. If that didn't work, then they were prepared to abolish slavery by force, the Constitution notwithstanding.

All these reasons I see being articulated are secondary to the primary cause of the whole problem. So how do you explain this? Why did all the seceding states claim they left because of the North's attempts to abolish slavery? Was it all just rhetoric?

You obviously didn't read my post. I stated why the North went to war with the South, not why the South left the Union. Had the South not been a cash cow the North would have said good riddance.