Attending middle school and high school in Texas during the late 90s and early 00s, we were taught that states rights was the primary cause of the American Civil War. In fact, answering "slavery" on the multiple choice test question was marked wrong.
I realize that many factors (economic, political, social, etc.) played a role, but what was the primary cause and would the Civil War have occurred without the slavery issue?
This has been answered quite comprehensively on a number of occasions, so rather than rehash it, if it's alright with you, I'll link you to a previous discussion on the issue. Basically, those other issues were incidental to the larger debate on not only the existence, but the propagation of slavery. Many Southerners wanted it expanded to the territories, and even to the point that they would be allowed to take their slaves with them to live in free states. Northerners increasingly balked at this, and became determined to confine slavery to the areas in which it already existed.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/us25s/civil_war_slavery_or_states_rights/