The states rights arguments were there from the outset. Slavery came into the fore for the North later as the war ground on
Just as you cannot separate pre-war Southern economic and political issues from slavery, neither can you separate states rights issues when slavery WAS the states' right issue front and center, that had divided this country from the very beginning.
This is precisely why the South called themselves "Slave States" , rewrote their constitution to preserve it, and why all those five states that gave statements of causes listed slavery front and center.
Sorry, but to try and downplay slavery is absurd.
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
