I fail to see how the main reason for the Civil War was slavery when Abraham Lincoln and the Union offered the Confederacy a deal that would guarantee them slavery if they would agree to rejoin the union... On TWO separate occasions. Of course, as we know, the Confederacy declined... Because while slavery was an issue, it was only a small part of what caused the secession. The south would have never left if it was just about slavery. Many in the south had already freed their slaves and many more were in favor of a gradual end to slavery that wouldn't overtly punish the 2% of the population in the south who still relied on slavery.


State rights was the general cause of secession, but the real issue that the vast majority of southerners were concerned with above slavery were the prohibitively punishing tariffs being levied against the south with which the union refused to budge, even in their two deals that they offered to the Confederacy. The Confederacy would very likely have accepted an offer that included ditching the tariff and a gradual phasing out of slavery. The north had no intentions of offering that, however, because the south and the tariff were supporting the dependent northern states. This was a very similar issue as the Revolutionary War's taxation without representation theme.

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