[Non-Sequitur]

Hypothetical question: If the southern states had freed the slaves and immediately seceded, would there still have been the possibility, probability or inevitability for war?

If the South had freed its slaves why would it have seceded in the first place?

[ought-six]

“If the South had freed its slaves why would it have seceded in the first place?”

For the same reason it did in reality: To retain its economic interests. The South believed that the United States, as created and accepted, was a nation of individual sovereign states that entered into a compact for certain mutual benefits, and through that compact the states allowed for a small and limited federal government to have certain enumerated (specified) and limited powers, all other powers to remain with the states and the people. Abe Lincoln (and some of the Northern states, but not all) thought that the states were subordinate to and subservient to the federal government.