I vaguely remember people mentioning that it was through literature like Uncle Tom's Cabin that set the war off which seemed silly on its face. There's even a story of Lincoln meeting the author and going "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Then again US history in schools is just an absolute joke compared to the material reality of history so when people have no real frame of understanding the blowback from history, it starts in school stories like books setting it off rather than the South being terrified of further slave revolts akin to Haiti and John Brown's uprising showed just how easily it might actually happen amongst a lot more.