Events that Led to the Civil War: Slavery as an Economic Engine Not a Moal Isssue

[Minimalist]

Now some of you have already dismissed me out of hand for suggesting that the cotton gin started the CW

The cotton gin made slavery more economically viable where it existed.  But, by itself, that did not start the civil war.  Western expansion was bringing states into the union where the traditional cash crops of the southern economy would not thrive.   

The south was faced with the prospect of more non-slave states entering the union and bolstering the northern economic power base which already dwarfed the south.  Having been instrumental in the founding of the nation this was a prospect which the south did not want to risk.  More than half of US presidents before Lincoln were southerners but that included 5 of the first 7 so the handwriting was clearly on the wall.


There was another factor, though.  Almost a perception that the CW was an idea whose time had come.  Remember no one expected the fighting to last beyond a single big battle and First Manassas/Bull Run shocked the shit out of both sides.  The later engagement at Ball's Bluff was another union disaster and both were chickenshit compared to Shiloh in early 1862.
Presumably by then, no one on either side thought of it as some sort of "adventure" anymore.