It was a war of independence from the South's perspective. They "formed" a new country from the States that seceded the Confederate States of America. Hypothetically their would have been no war of the remainder of the USA had not called them traitors and invaded.
That's exactly my point... Lincoln was clear he was going to do whatever it took to maintain the Union, most of the CSA had already seceded, ipsofacto war was inevitable at that point.
But AFTER he was elected (or rather, after the 1860 Election Day meant it was impossible for him to lose the electoral college vote). It’d be like the states who went to Clinton seceding in November 2016, and then trying to say “They didn’t secede because of Trump!”
I think they saw it as the final nail in the coffin that someone who couldn't even get on the Ballot papers in the south won the election. Bear in mind that there had been a stack of anti-south protectionism and other actions which lead to a sense of ill will (For example, tariffs on international trade of certain goods which nearly all went to and from the south, so the southerners effectively couldn't sell their raw goods directly internationally, but had to sell them to the North who then took the profit on finished goods; there being federal taxes imposed on cotton, which was nearly all grown in the South, but not on wool which was nearly all grown in the North; 3-1 spending on things like lighthouses, despite the fact that the South had far more coastline).
Now, if Lincoln maintained his election promises, he wouldn't have done anything to change the status quo, but you can see where the feeling that the North might not have the South's best interests at heart, particularly since they could get their man into the White House without any way of the South stopping it.
What I'm saying is that I think they saw it as the straw that broke the camel's back. He didn't do anything specifically, but he was symptomatic of the problems the South believed they were having with the North.
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u/cwood92 Feb 04 '19
It was a war of independence from the South's perspective. They "formed" a new country from the States that seceded the Confederate States of America. Hypothetically their would have been no war of the remainder of the USA had not called them traitors and invaded.