However, if you listen to the public slavery is one of a variety of answers, and it is not always the answer that comes first or most often.  States’ rights is most often put forward as the cause of secession with Lincoln’s election, economic and cultural factors, and the settlement of the west also earning some votes.  Scholars and historians may but forward a (mostly) unified answer that slavery was the cause of secession, but the public will not.  And Civil War sites have to find ways to work through this divide, because no matter what you interpret at your site or how visitors will always ask the question: “What caused the Civil War?”