[quadrant]

Grant always believed the admission of Texas into the Union was the major cause of the War, for it is impossible to imagine the South as a cultural, political, social, and economic unit without Texas. With Texas, the South is quite viable; but without that huge land mass, the South has no real substance.
And it is important to remember that whatever the status of slavery, Lincoln could not allow the South to leave the Union and for one reason: no US president - esp one from Illinois - could ever allow the port of New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi River to be controlled by a foreign power.

[BroJoeK]

quadrant: "Lincoln could not allow the South to leave the Union and for one reason: no US president - esp one from Illinois - could ever allow the port of New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi River to be controlled by a foreign power."

In fact, from Day One of his administration, Lincoln told the Confederacy that they could not have a war unless they themselves started it.
So Lincoln had no intention of going to war unless forced to.

But from Day One of his administration, Jefferson Davis announced that he would decide if "the integrity and jurisdiction of our territory be assailed, it will but remain for us with a firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence upon a just cause."

In April 1861, the Confederacy's "integrity" was not "assailed", but it needed war to force Upper South and Border States to decide which side they would join -- Union or Confederacy?

So war was forced on Lincoln, at Fort Sumter, not the other way around, FRiend.

[BroJoeK]

quadrant: "it is impossible to imagine the South as a cultural, political, social, and economic unit without Texas.
With Texas, the South is quite viable; but without that huge land mass, the South has no real substance."

Texas' population in 1860 was nothing like it is today.
In 1860 Texas had just over 400,000 whites, which put it in about the middle of Confederate states: fewer than Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama & Georgia, but more than Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina and Florida.

And Texas contributed about 86,000 troops to the Confederacy which was a little less than Mississippi, a few more than South Carolina.

So, you could say that in terms of support for Confederacy, Texans did their "fair share" compared to other states, but just barely, and certainly not more.