The "cause" of the war was the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Recall Lincoln's First Inaugural address: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
The reasons behind that attack are complex in the extreme. Certainly slavery was an issue but 95% of southerners were hard-scrabble farmers who owned no slaves. Of the remainder, most owned only one or two. It was the aristocracy (the planter class) which owned the bulk. How to explain the eager participation by the vast non-slaveholding majority is the problem.
The reasons behind that attack are complex in the extreme. Certainly slavery was an issue but 95% of southerners were hard-scrabble farmers who owned no slaves. Of the remainder, most owned only one or two. It was the aristocracy (the planter class) which owned the bulk. How to explain the eager participation by the vast non-slaveholding majority is the problem.
