Countless posts on this board deny any connection between slavery and secession. I'm sure you've noticed.

To borrow a line from Captain Renault in "Casablanca," soon we'll read one telling us that Confederate leaders were shocked, shocked to learn that slavery was going on.
The effort to distance the Confederate cause from slavery has gone to such extremes that I wonder what would happen if some people ever admit the obvious.

We would profit from reading more written by Southerners during the late 1850s and early 1860s. Let our ancestors speak for themselves; not the New York Times, not Frederick Douglas, or some other hostile, ill-informed Yankee observer.