Lincoln proved that doesn't work. A Nation divided cannot stand.

The Civil War was only secondarily about Slave Ownership.

The real fight was between two facets of Industry: Resource Gathering VS Factories and Shipping.

The North had all the ports while the South had all the resources. Factories are built near ports to move goods and provide power generators with moving water. Plantations are built in temperate zones which lend well to agriculture.

The South was getting pissed off that they didn't get any increased profits from the markup on goods the North was implementing. The North was getting richer while the South stayed the same. So, the South began to open ports with the express intent of opening factories and becoming self-sufficient, away from the North who was reliant on Southern agricultural resources to fuel a ravenous world-wide textile industry.

The North knew they could not compete with the South. The South had slaves, resources, and new technologies such as steam engines which allowed them to open ports using railroads and steamboats to ship. The Northern ports were becoming obsolete.

So, what did the North do? They colluded to make sure the South would not get any support globally should they begin pushing the Northern ports out of the Textile Industry, and other Industries. They used predatory tactics to scalp factories being established in the South.

Ultimately, however, the North was fighting a losing battle. The South had too many foreign interest groups willing to invest.

So, the North played the Race card, and freeing the Slaves became public issue number one. Seeing how an Industrialized South complete with slave labor would annihilate all competition worldwide (you can't compete with slave labor, cough cough, China, cough cough), the North did have the moral high ground.

But, it's important to know the facts behind the Civil War. Each side had reasonable grievances:

• The North wanted to maintain the status quo, with Industry in the North and Resources in the South, forming a solid foundation for an economically superior Nation at the cost of some States losing out on the global profits.

• The South wanted to become self-sufficient and not rely on a corrupt business class of industrialists telling them what they'd pay for produce and materials while also being able to make their own rules on Slavery, as is supported by State Sovereignty.

Taking it back to Lincoln, he reasoned that State Sovereignty doesn't supersede the interests of the individual American persons, which he counted Slaves as being. The South saw it as an attempt to handicap them from ever being able to industrialize more than a human rights issue.

Lincoln knew, however, that should the South succeed in their dream of an Industrialized South, it would mean ruin for the entire Nation:

• The North would become bankrupt, unable to compete with an Industrially Charged Pro-Slavery South, and then bought up by foreign interest groups.

• The South would rely on foreign interest groups to fund new factories being built and ports opened, resulting in a land where 99% of the people working are Slaves, and the 1% are owned by foreigners.

Lincoln made the harsh decision to sacrifice State Sovereignty in order to maintain the Status Quo, with Industry up North and Resources down South. The pathway he saw to do that was to end Slavery.

TL;DR: If our Nation divides, it will destroy National commerce as the States draw lines in the sand and attempt to become self-sufficient. Some States simply cannot compete, and would fall victim to bankruptcy and being purchased by foreign interest groups. Lincoln found that A More Perfect Union requires some States sacrifice a dream of total economic domination so that a balanced trade landscape might benefit the Nation and its People as a whole. When one State succeeds, we all succeed. When one State fails, we all fail.

Texas is like our dominant Hand. It does the a large majority of work in our nation, but that doesn't mean it can survive without the rest of the body.