Hey, I agree that slavery was not "the" cause of the American Civil War; any time someone starts talking about THE cause of anything that complex, better watch out. But just because it wasn't THE cause doesn't mean that Negro slavery, with all its social, political, and economic ramifications, and the increasingly hostile sectionalim that the conflicts over the expansion of Slavery (Kansas/Nebraska, the "Compromise" of 1850, etc.) exacerbated weren't A cause, and significant ones at that.

I absolutely agree with the statement. Unfortunately, most proponents of the Civil-War-fought-over-slavery issue will refuse to even recognize that there *were* other causes. Or that slavery was just a portion of the larger causes.

I'm not asking you to do homework for me :) But literally, it's extremely difficult to find those kinds of references. Any widely available history book on black civil rights will start with making a general reference to Douglass and Tubman, than head straight to the Civil War and the subsequent Constitutional Amendments, skim over Jim Crow laws, and then hit Martin Luther King. Frustrating.