And even better than my writing below:
I'm not going to engage in a debate here. But I will not let widely held but ignorant beliefs be stated without correction.
Anyone who reads contemporaneous documents on the subject will see it was entirely about slavery. To believe otherwise after reading them takes an act of deliberate ignorance.
No matter what political hyperbole or revisionist history is applied, it came down to a battle to "Preserve the Union (in order to end slavery)" or "State's Rights (to continue to enslave humans)."
Perhaps the four best documents on this matter are the Ordinances or Declarations of four of the southern states themselves in which they lay out the reason why the wanted to secede from the Union.
These aren't the anonymous postings of pamphleter, nor are they an editorial of a single newspaper, a personal letter, or writings of a single author.
These are either Public Acts or explanatory notes that accompanied the Acts, adopted either by a referendum or by a convention lawfully called and assembled. I can't think of anything that speaks to the sentiment of the people better then the documents they themselves voted to approve, or the Representatives they chose voted to approve.
Mississippi Declaration of Secession: http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp
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.
South Caroline Declaration of Causes of Secession: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/secession_causes.htm
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.
Georgia Declaration of Secession: http://www.scribd.com/doc/47469194/Georgia%E2%80%99s-Declaration-of-Secession
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with theGovernment of the United States of America, present to their confederates and theworld the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have hadnumerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederateStates with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Texas Ordinance of Secession: http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/secesson.htm
...was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits...
The controlling majority of the Federal Government...avowed purpose [is] acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.
Apart from the Ordinances, CSA Vice President Alexander Stephen's "Cornerstone Speech" of March 1861 laid it out as:
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.
As I said, I'm not here to debate. There is nothing for reasonable men to debate -- the words of the people of the time are clear and unambiguous. To claim the Civil War was about anything other the slavery is as ludicrous as to state the Sun sometimes rises in the west and sets in the east.
