[Adder]

Its pretty much inescapable that the root cause of the CW was slavery. Just like today, the upper elites were able to have the lower folk muster to do their bidding. So they fought.
But those lower folk, the bubbas and billy bobs from Podunkia
didn't own slaves and did not care about slaves.
Instead they fought to be free and to repel invaders.
Even with superior numbers, the North had a tough time of it. A couple battles that went the other way, such as Gettysburg, and the outcome might have looked very different.
What lives on is not racism or a desire for slavery but bravery and individuality; a desire for freedom and a rejection of tyranny. Thats why the South lives on.

[Pikachu_Dad]

No, the ‘root’ of the civil war was the irresponsible ‘fire breather’ democrats led by Vice President John C Breckenridge.

The Republicans bent over backwards (Corwin amendment) to maintain the Union.

Think how different those four years had the Democrats used their incredible levels of power in Federal government to peacefully secede.

The belligerent democrats had more than sufficient power in the House, Senate and Judiciary to force the Federal government to accept the their leaving.

The elected not to go that route, but to secede. Then the belligerent democrats forced the issue (on dithering Virginia) by starting a shooting war at fort Sumpter.

[DiogenesLamp]

Its pretty much inescapable that the root cause of the CW was slavery.

You need to stop believing crap just because people tell you it is true.

Washington DC passed the Corwin Amendment which would have guaranteed permanent slavery in the US.

Slavery was not the reason why Washington DC invaded the South. The reason Washington DC invaded the South was because the South was going to remove their trade with Europe from the corrupt control of the "establishment" which was receiving around 700 million dollars per year from Southern production.

The war was about *money* and "slavery" is a lie they tell to justify the killing of 750,000 people in a war fought for economic supremacy.

[Brass Lamp]

...and $500,000 is now paid them [New England fishermen] annually out of the Treasury.

Millennial "POST-post moderns" will probably be surprised to learn that $500,000 once represented some real value. When I see numbers like this, I have to wonder if they refer to US dollars before or after being unhinged from the Spanish dollar (not quite an ounce of silver) in 1857. Prior to that change, inflationary creating-money-by-lending-it could potentially bite creditors in the ass by shorting the money supply enough to make repayment impossible. While that may seem, at first, to be a built-in feature of an effective predatory practice, early lenders could be called on the carpet to account for their own declared worth at a time when claiming debt was like claiming vacuum. Once the trade value of the USD was reduced to mutually agreed upon fiction, the power of the ledger equaled the power of the mint. It was at just this moment in US history that different sections of the country begin to complain about the effect of Federal spending.