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secession and the war were not *only* or even primarily, about slavery.

Southern sympathizers can twist this issue any way they want but at the very core of the sectionalism that brought on the war was slavery. The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories. Without slavery there would have been no civil war. Southern apologists would love to paint this as some sort of effort by the South to cast off Northern dominance, which is unbelievably ironic considering the utter depravity of the kind of dominance the Southern slave holders kept over millions of blacks. Lincoln never made a secret of why he freed the slaves only in the States which had seceded, but there was also never any doubt after he emancipated those slaves that when the war was over slavery would be abolished.

The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories.

I forget the numbers but the vast majority of Johnny-rebs didn't own any slaves. So what did they fight for? Their rich neighbors maybe?

As for slavery in the new territories, well that was an extension of the souths fear of political estrangement from the government in Washington, as Yankee interests gained more and more power, both politically and economically. Emancipation societies were not popular in the South not because there were no southern emancipationists, but because of their association with radical abolitionism, and, a sense among southerners that it was an effected attitude by Yankees to act all morally superior. Of course the south was vary aware of the irony that the north didn't "discover" it's abolitionist sentiments until the Atlantic slave trade was closed down by the English.

In most cases I can see, the use of the Confederate ANV battle flag by Southerners (note: I'm talking about Southerners, not racists, I know the Klan likes to use the flag, but right now the state with the largest Klan activity is Michigan) do so out of pure cussedness. That is, you tell a person he can't do this, you are only gonna make him want to do it more. And from the perspective of those who have a true link with confederate heritage, (I for instance, am distantly connected to General P.G.T. Beauregard, which, given that Generals involvement with the adoption of the ANV flag by the Confederacy, gives me a particular claim to that flag as a symbol my family heritage) it is frustrating to only hear one side of the story told ad nauseam every were, with the only justification being that, even if the facts are technically wrong, it doesn't matter on account of the belief that if one has to completely soil all Southern culture in order to attack the evils of Slavery it's ok, because in the end, all southerners are racists anyway, right?

There was a Mark Fiore cartoon I saw on the MSNBC website that was quite illustrative of this hypocrisy of Yankee superiority on these grounds, on the issue of Southern heritage he just put this up

Well excuse me but that's Massachusetts heritage, not Southern.

Without slavery there would have been no civil war.

You are right about that, for the simple reason that without slavery their would have been no source of labor in the south which the northern industrialists would have had to compete with. End slavery maybe, but free em and make em equal, that probably would have come as a surprise to most Yankee troops.

"The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories. Without slavery there would have been no civil war."

It might be just as accurate to say that without violent anti-slavery, there would have been no war.
The inclusion of violent anti-slavery means had changed the debate over the latter 1850's. Anthony Burns (et al.), Bleeding Kansas, Harper's Ferry, the public mourning of John Brown and the suspicious fires in Texas in the summer of 1860 all combined to import ominous meaning to the election of a Republican to the White House in 1860.
The election of 1860 was seen by a significant number of Southerners as a referendum on the violent means adopted by the more radical wing of the Republican party. Indeed, John A. Andrew, Republican candidate for governor and John Brown's volunteer defense attorney declared, on the night of Brown's execution, "This (Harper's Ferry) is the eternal and heaven sustained nature of the irrepressible conflict." Andrew was elected in the same election that took Abraham Lincoln to the White House. Here was a Republican, trying to establish a link between Harper's Ferry and Republican policy. And he was elected to the Governor's office after making that statement.

If not for these violent means, I would wager that the election of Abraham Lincoln would have been viewed by most Southerners as undesirable, but not the end of the world (or the Union). I don't believe there was a credible threat to secede if Fremont had won in 1856 (although, I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong).