What mainly caused the Civil War?

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Slavery, without it there wouldn't have been anything big enough to cause a civil war though "state's rights".

[Kaine for Senate '18]

The role of slavery in the Civil War is vastly overrated. Fewer than 3% of Southerners owned slaves. A vast majority were Yeoman Farmers who had two thing they loved: a farm and a family. When these were threshed by Northern invasion, they fought for their homes. They fought for their way of life, a way of life that Yankee Republicans and industrialists threatened. 

The Civil War was a war was caused because the two regions of the nation were very different:

1) The North which had industry but lacked tight families and tradition.
2) The South was a close knit, agricultural community.

People so different could never get along, which is why war came. It would have happened whether or not there were slaves. The crisis over tariffs in the 1830s and state's rights were far more responsible for the war than 100,000 or so slaves in the South. 

Simply to cement my point further there is a story I'm very fond of. In 1862, soon after the Battle of Shiloh, a Union brigade surrounded a single ragged Confederate solider. This Confederate was a middle aged, Yeoman farmer who couldn't have cared much about slavery or the Constitution. "What are you fighting for reb?" the Union commander asked. "I'm fighting 'cause your down here," was the response. That was the Southern spirit, keep out of our homes. The South saw the North ever since the tariff probelms in the 1830s as a group of people who wanted to destroy their agricultural, close knit way of life and replace it with cold city life.

In conclusion, slavery was not the Southern way of life. Slavery was just a part of a larger North-South divide: differing ways of life. The South's Yeoman Farmers were going to protect their homes, farms, families and property from Northern aggression, and the war came.   

 

Interesting. I largely agree with you that that is why southerners fought and joined regiments and such but I meant the government's views and why the state government seceeded.

If the war was to end slavery, then how come every other nation in the world ended slavery peacefully?

They didn't have one pigheaded region that was dead set on defending the indefensible.  That said, I don't think slavery was the only cause, either, but it was an important one.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

The Confederate states were not an independent nation as they had no right to secede in the first place.

Wow, you and me actually agree on something.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

The Confederate states were not an independent nation as they had no right to secede in the first place.

Could you point to exactly where in the Constitution it says that states have no right to secede?

It doesn't say that there is not a right to secede, but the document's legal status makes it so secession is illegal.  The Constitution, like any other legal contract between multiple parties, cannot be voided by a singular party without that expressed right being specifically written into the contract.  Nowhere in the Constitution does it say any participating party can secede and thus void the contract that is the Constitution.  If you don't believe me, I refer you to the Supreme Court.  They ruled on several occasions that secession was unconstitutional.

Wow, our views are exactly the same on the issue.  I'm stunned.