On Why the Southern States Emphasized Slavery More than They Did Tariffs in Their Respective Articles of Secession

Probably for the identical reason that George W. Bush emphasized WMD more than he did the other, far more likely, reasons (i.e., oil, geopolitical hegemony, concerns for Israel, the scoring of political points on the home-front, etc., etc.); namely, that it would sell infinitely better to the electorate. The fact of the matter is that slavery was in no danger whatsoever (Lincoln's 1861 inaugural essentially being a slavery in perpetuity speech) and that if anything the institution would have been far LESS secure had the South seceded (the fact that the Fugitive Slave Act would have no longer been viable in that the North wouldn't have had to enforce it any longer, HELLO! - one of the major reasons why a lot of Northern abolitionists had wanted the NORTH to secede). I mean, I understand that none of these facts will likely resonate with the Lincoln cult (you know, the group that thinks that the South was motivated primarily by slavery and that the North was motivated primarily by a desire to end it) but the theory that the Southern politicians had lied to their citizens makes a hell of a lot more sense than the claim that that they were trying to protect an institution that didn't really need any protection.