I have to disagree with my friend Banjer on the slavery question. From the time of the American Revolution, there was a strong and growing sense of economic and political competition between the sparsely populated, agrarian South, and the more heavily populated and industrial North. The basis of the South's wealth and political strength was the Plantation Economy; vast tracts of land, bulk crops, and cheap (or slave) labor. The Plantation Aristocrats correctly saw that slavery was essential to their economic profitability in this system, and fought tooth and nail in Congress to preserve this right of each state to determine the slavery question on its own.

If States' Rights were the avowed reason for the rebellion, slavery indeed lay at the heart of the issue.