most historians (and abe himself) dance around the issue by attributing the war to state's rights, political/economical woes, and the deterioration of the union due to the southern states wanting more representation. but what was all of this born out of...the southern states feeling their economy would suffer as a result of losing their rights to function as they please. they were afraid that the fed would establish an overarching set of laws that would ultimately regulate how they conduct commerce and in turn affect the southern economy. and what was the lifeblood of the southern economy? slavery.
so in a word slavery may not have been the stated reson for the war, but ALL of the issues can be traced back to it.
still you never answered my original question which i will now restate: if the southern economy was not dependant on slave labor would there have been a civil war? i've given you several examples in my previous post of how the fed regulation of commerce was directly related to slavery.
