While I well understand that everyone here recognises the almost incomprehensible evil that was slavery, and no-one here would fight to defend it, there's a reason that this institution divided the whole country since our nation's very inception like no other and it is inaccurate to "set aside" the morality of it.
To suggest that the morality of slavery had no effect would be like suggesting North and South would have split in a reality where slavery did not exist (or was universal) and the South allowed only oxen whereas the North had no restriction. The nation then dividing into those defining themselves as "Oxen States" versus "Free States".
The South then becoming increasingly alarmed because only "Free States" would be formed from territories in the future, making a federally-imposed lifting of Southern "ox-only" laws across the South as inevitable.
Was an enormous amount of capital tied up in slaves? Sure, practically all of it in many areas, but if wealthy Southerners were known instead merely for their expensive draft animals and farm equipment, their would have been no issue.
To argue otherwise suggests that the collective North philosophically WELCOMED the loss of State's rights and the rise of an overbearing central government.
Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
