system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I believe that, in the American Civil War (or, "War Between the States"), the South had a mercenary goal of protecting their right to own slaves, not a noble goal of protecting the precedent of a state's right to secede. cmv

Having grown up in the South all my life, I have been exposed to many heated discussions over the real motivation of the South during the Civil War. Some people say the South went to War *because* they were being denied the right to secede (with the important thing to note being that there could potentially have been thousands of Rebels fighting for the South who had zero interest in slave ownership whatsoever). Other people say that the South's motive was purely mercenary, and they only went to war as a temper tantrum over not being allowed to enslave other human beings anymore.

In my humble opinion - I don't think anybody leaves their home and their family to protect an abstract "right" or liberty of a state's right to secede. I believe that when the South went to war, those men were fighting for their right to own slaves, and - ultimately - to protect their livelihoods.
gpt
Why not both?

I mean very little happens for one *AND ONLY ONE* reason. Most Southern troops and a sizeable percentage of Southern leaders didn't own slaves and weren't fighting to protect slavery according to the journals and first hand accounts we have.

Slavery was a very large part of the disagreement. It was the wedge that made other compromises impossible. That being said, it's important to not ignore the whole thing in the interest of pushing a single viewpoint.

Reductionist views are invariably wrong and result in poorer understandings of the events being discussed.