HN is pretty good at programming and startups, but even the shortest expedition into history gets even the most amateur historians all wound up and LOL.

The fundamental problem was regionalism and federalism vs states rights. Not talked about for obvious political reasons now a days because that would bring up obvious difficult questions... All the issues mentioned were trees in the forest being fought over as PR fodder for the bigger issue of the south wanted to be the south and didn't want some yankee telling them anything, even if the yankee was correct. Extreme stubbornness on both sides. Then the war of northern aggression started because the southerners told the northerners to F off and leave them alone too many times.

If you could have magically removed slavery and plantations from the history of the south and reinsert another set of trees like space alien contact and medieval era 3-d printers, the forest would remain and the civil war would have been fought more or less the same way over PLA vs ABS figurines of intellectually protected property of images of space aliens or something.

The Trees Just Don't Matter (compared to the forest)

To some extent I believe this comes from the HN population consisting of many unmarried people. Trust me, once you get married you can bicker over stuff that has nothing to do with the real issue all day if you want.

But you can't ignore the slavery though. Without it, there would have been no wealth in the south worth going to war for (nor enough resources to support succession).