This was the vision of the Leadership of the Confederacy. I cannot say this played into the vision of your typical southerner who was eking out a livelihood unrelated to the peculiar institution. They, for the most part were dragged in to protect their life and property from an "invader".
It is with too broad of a brush to say "for the South the War was about slavery". It is no exaggeration to say that for the Leadership of the Confederacy the War was most certainly all about slavery.
See post #1032 (IMHO)
And as I wearily once more point out, it matters not what the Southern motivation was for independence, the decision as to whether or not there would be a war was entirely in the hands of the North.
In other words, the only reasons that matter are the Union reasons, because if they did not want to prosecute a war, there would have been no war.
They did want to prosecute a war, and their reasons for prosecuting this war were not to abolish slavery, but were instead for the purpose of dominating states that had broken away from their control.
Well, as I see it the North went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South , or as you say ‘’the Southern Slave Power leadership’’ went to war to preserve slavery and lost everything.
You ought to try reading what they themselves said about secession and slavery.
Which, I would add for emphasis, were two separate issues -- related like two people on either end of a telephone line, but not organically or causally related. Read the list of their complaints against the Northern-dominated Congress and get some idea of what they thought their issues were. They were candid, lucid, and not at all reticent.And knight me no conspiratorial golden circles, either.
If there were any conspiracies, they were in the North, where Lincoln spent March and the first half of April, 1861, all hugger-mugger in secret meetings with six, or five, or nine Yankee governors, holding war councils with his stoutest gubernatorial supporters, men whose support would be essential as he prepared to reach around the Congress and turn the United States into a military empire.
But the departing States' complaints varied from place to place; Texas, for example, had a serious complaint about Comanche raids and general insecurity and Congress's deliberate refusal to appropriate funds and send troops to help defend the State in accordance with Congress's constitutional duty. Mississippi's declaration of causes was different, and South Carolina's (search under "Robert Rhett") showed still other causes, including the disappearance of the South Carolinian shipbuilding industry because, they said, of favorable treatment Congress had given New England shipyards.
The causes varied, they all mentioned slavery specifically because Northern politicians had made the slavery issue their club wherewith to beat the South into submission politically, dividing the country into a greater part (theirs) and a lesser (the South), and setting the table for a huge Yankee Thanksgiving at Southerners' expense.
Economic exploitation of one region by another more politically powerful -- what country hasn't seen that? But this was America, and (according to "Publius" in The Federalist), some States weren't supposed to be able to eat the other States' babies.
That's why the South left.
Oh, and there's a reason the South's economy didn't even get up on its knees until World War II, and it wasn't because Southerners "talllkkk slooowwww" or are stupid. It was due to Northern businesses' "unlocking the value", to use a phrase bandied about much later by Wall Street raiders, of their strategic middleman position w/r/t Southern economic flows.
In other words, the South was on her back because Northern business interests were sitting on her chest from 1865 to 1945, and then some.
Where can I read about this "Golden Circle"?