Basically it was offer to the South to keeep their slaves, if only they would not leave the Union!
They still fought the war to leave, so it was not "all about slavery", more about tariffs.
Stop being a revisionist douche. If you're claiming that the South seceded because of tariffs, you better be prepared to show ample firsthand evidence. For you, I've got the Cornerstone Speech by the CSA's Vice President (emphasis is mine):
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions - African slavery as it exists among us - the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it - when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.
You'll need to point out where he talks about tariffs, because I'm not seeing it.
Although you're right about Lincoln deciding that he would preserve the Union without freeing a single slave if it were possible to do that. Obviously, that didn't happen though. One of the major reasons the Southern states seceded, and you can verify this in their statements of justification for secession, is because they were upset that the Northern states were no longer following the Fugitive Slave Act where a Northern state would have to return a fugitive slave to their Southern owner. In fact, several Northern states specifically criminalized the return of a fugitive slave. Many Southern states stated that, without that clause in the Constitution, the Southern states would not have agreed to it at all. Now that the Northern states were no longer doing their part to keep slavery around, the South wanted out. More than one state cited estimates of $3 or $4 billion in lost property that this would inflict on their economy. And, of course, when they said "property" they were referring to "people".
Another major reason were the laws which outlawed slavery in new states admitted to the Union. Since the slaveholding states were not able to increase their numbers then their percentage of representation in the Federal government was bound to fall and the writing was already on the wall with regard to the end of slavery. So, they wanted out, they wanted to return to being sovereign nations free to continue practicing their God-given rights to rule over and legally own black people.
It had fuck all to do with tariffs, so don't act like it did.
Even so, the Confederate Battle Flag died out as a symbol until the racist "Dixiecrat" party ran Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate in 1948, and they brought the flag back as the symbol of their party. Then, in the 1950s and 1960s leading up to the surge in the civil rights movement, white Southerners opposed to civil rights seized upon the flag as a symbol of their opposition (helped in no small part by the KKK also using the flag). So, if a white Southerner opposed civil rights for black people, do you think the reason for their opposition had anything to do with tariffs and taxes, or was it just because they were a bunch of racist dickheads who didn't like black people and felt justified because their great-grandparents also didn't like black people?
