Was slavery the main cause of the American Civil War?

[jokerman]

But was the opposition to slavery founded on economic antagonism?  Either way you guys are getting into an unneccessary "chicken and egg" type situation.  The debate over the cause of the Civil War is an annoyingly trite one, which can never really be settled as history is not a clear chain of cause and effect but rather a dynamic system.

[pbrower2a]

Slavery was not the sole cause of the American Civil War, but it was certainly inextricable from it.

Slavery was a symptom of the depravity of a feudal social order in which an oligarchy was able to exercise complete control of the economic life of a society. The planters dominated the South as small farmers, shopkeepers, single-branch bankers, and small-scale manufacturers couldn't. The North was a democracy; the South was a collection of dictatorships.

Slavery might have been a declining institution and even a doomed one without the Civil War. It is conceivable that Abraham Lincoln would have emancipated slaves much as the British did in their empire -- buying the freedom of slaves who wanted freedom, and sticking the ones who didn't (usually the old ones who could no longer work) to the slave owners. The slave owners would have none of that. The fools! Such is what Lincoln did in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri.  That would have been a reasonable solution, one far less costly than the Civil War.

... As it is, the Army decided the situation for Lincoln; it found itself with plenty of "contraband" that had escaped from slavery or been liberated. It was not going to return slaves to former owners and it was not going to keep slaves. Ex-slaves got paid work on fortifications and other military projects -- and were probably more efficient as paid employees than they had been as slaves who often had only the lash to keep them from goldbricking.

Southerners had tried to spread slavery where it wasn't welcome (Bleeding Kansas) and had gotten the Fugitive Slave Act enacted. Such tended to polarize opinions on both sides of a political rift that had been developing for decades.   

[Purple State]

..
WillK,
'The quote of which I took that statement from was from a document written by the Georgua Secession Convention entitled, "Declaration of Causes of Seceding States," whom the scribe who copied it was a clerk for the state legislature named Justin Sanders. I never said it was from the official report writen there (which mentions slavery as one of many reasons for secession, not the only reason), I simply said it was a statement made by delegates. The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States did come from the Georgia Seccession Convention, and in fact, it inspired other states to write there own statements.

The most poigant statement that came from Gerogia's decleration of csuses was this:

"The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country."

The italicized part is the Georgian statement that the business interestst have manipulated the Constitution (using special facts in the Commerce Clause) to gain an upper hand in the country. I would never say slavery had 0% to do with the Civil War (as that would be just wrong), but I would not say it was the main cause. I would put it as one of many issues in a growing divide between the North and South over economics and the reading of the Constitution.

 That Georgia document, from which you quote, clearly states in its first several sentences  that the opposition to slavery by the republicans was the main, and only, cause of Georgia's secession.  No other reason is given. The section you have quoted is NOT described as a cause for secession in that document.   You are misrepresenting history.

Egregiously so in fact. This took 5 seconds to find:

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Emphasis is mine. But they state that any issue they may have is directly related to the slave issue. I don't know how that could be any clearer.