#but it is a greater and worse oversimplification to pretend slavery didn't enter into it or was tangential

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

that's funny because this southerner, though he covered some of the very things you mention in the same speech, ALSO said this about what the South was up to

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

So it sounds like though this guy, the Vice President of the Confederacy, thought there were many issues at play, but this was the main one.

You know what's interesting too is that you might say, well, he's a politician, this is propaganda, he is misdirecting, but isn't it telling that if he is misdirecting, the misdirection he thinks is most useful to his audience is to say something like this? Doesn't that speak to the values of his society in an ominous way?

And listen, this is not a zero sum game. We can acknowledge this and acknowledge that the North was evil in many ways and war is terrible and so on and so on but though in an academic setting in good faith we can weigh all these competing causes and consider their relative weight, I have to say I have very little patience for this obfuscating what was and had long been recognized as the fundamental dividing line between North and South going back at least to 1787.