Responce to Libretarian girl

I'm responding to Libretarian girl's post on the civil war:

Some people have made some great points, but as a proud member of the far-left I'd like to add a little.
First, I don't hate America, I'm a dual-citizen of Canada and America, and consider America--faults and follies included--to be neither evil or some kind of new Jerusalem. Of course slavery was bad, but it wasn't like the mason-dixon line delineated an end to slavery. http://www.slavenorth.com/
Now the reason that slavery didn't continue, as stated on the link, is largely the non-development of large-landowner(plantation)based agrarian economy.
So here we see an economic divergence, just as there is a rise in sectionalism during the late 1820's, following the end of fervent nationalism inspired by the war of 1812. At the same time there is great expansion into the west, both playing into the hands of sectionalist politicians and exasperating their differences.
This battle of political influence becomes the central narrative of the period from the mid 1830's through the 1850's. I should add I have no paticular guilt about this as an American. As a member of a species who did cruel things like this across the world, I suppose I feel a level of shame and horror. Also, to be perfectly realistic, wars are never based on ideals. They're based on economics, politics and power, and even the few examples to the contrary barely hold up to a hard look-over. People may think or be told that there are idealistic reasons for the war they are/were in, but it happens every time. (American Revolution-motivated by want of power over politics and economics among the rich-planting class, not idealism about liberty and freedom among the common people).
Slavery acts as one facet of this struggle from the 1830's-50's. The other equally important facets include issues like tarriffs, states' rights and the economic dynamics as the North industrialized.
To say the South didn't have a problem with its rights being trampled on is to fundamentally misunderstand the issue. Its not an issue of whether it was happening, but if they thought it was happening. If you feel threatened, it doesn't matter if you actually are, you respond in the same way.
I don't have the info to get bogged down in an argument about the foundations of the republican party, but the whole "The real history of the Civil War is that people in the North got fed up with allowing the barbaric practice of slavery to continue" is a half-truth designed to mislead. You can say that the fear Lincoln would end slavery caused secession, but again this fits into the greater fears of Northern control over the South, held by both the majority white poor and the minority white, rich land and slave owning upper class.
Slavery was an important part of their economic dynamics, one that they felt was wholly threatened by the North. Their fear of no more slave states is more about political influence than it is about the righteousness of slavery. It is equally about the set of other motives (federal power etc).
As many have pointed out above me, if you look at the primary source writings of the time, the vast majority of the north (the "moral majority") was a product of the time, overtly racist and accepting of slavery. There was a vocal minority that opposed slavery, but while they certainly player more heavily into Lincoln's administration then earlier ones, they were not the factor that the south was afraid of. People weren't fed up with slavery, they were strong unionist, distrustful of secessionists and southerners, a purely geo-cultural effect. Which is my final point, and where I agree with dablameit, that there is an important geo-cultural (rising out of economic disparity in the North and South, and geographically based cultural differences and prejudic) divide that drove the common people behind their leaders (driven by economics, power and politics) during the civil war.
Slavery was important, but was in no way the central or singular conflict.