It would have been. It's the equivalent of the big government leftists being pissed off that we want our own state rights and less federal government. The civil war was NOT started over slavery and the amount of people who have been indoctrinated with that mindset and believe that the Confederates were the bad guys are extremely backwards. There were slaves in the north as well and overall a tiny fraction of land owners even owned slaves at all. You really think a country would go to war with their own brothers so that the top wealthiest people could have some slaves?