Only a fool would claim that the main motivator for the war was not slavery after all ALL the South's leaders happily admitted this was the case. Southern politicians had been scheming for over a decade to spread it throughout the Territories and agitating to prevent the people therein in from outlawing it.
Lincoln's election meant a end to their schemes and the certain containment of the Evil. This drove them wild with irrational rage and the forced the War upon the nation. This is not even disputable except on the fringes of scholarly research. However, if you prefer to read the ravings of such nutcases I can do nothing about it. But I defy you to examine the Buchanan administration and deny that it was under the control of Southerners like Cobb, Floyd and pro-slavery northerners.
Ron Reagan sided with John Kerry so who gives a fork what the son of Wilberforce thought?
The majority of Southerns were roped into this disaster by the insanity of their leaders who by this time were arguing that slavery was not just not evil but a positive good. We hear echos of this here when tales of the kindly masters treating their property well are passed (like gas.) Similiar gas is passed by those trying to foist silly tales such as the Southern emancipation movement.
What are your thoughts on the Northern States that had slaves -- that were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation ?
You're right, anger against the north had been brewing since before the 1860s. The government passed the Tariff of 1828, which increased the cost of foreign products to encourage manufacturing in the north. It was the highest tariff in the nation's history. The south sold cotton to Europe and bought items in return, but this tariff made these goods the farmers needed too expensive. Also, the Constitution does not ban secession, not mentioning it as a power denied to the states in Article 1, Section 10. The Declaration of Independance even supports the right to secede, stating "whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." The northern states illegally invaded the Southern states to force them to remain under their government, which is tyranny by any definition.