The election of Lincoln is what caused the southern states to secede. Lincoln promised (or threatened, depending on which side you were on) the end to slavery in the country. The South wanted to maintain their freedom to own slaves. The North's primary issue was with the secession. They wanted to keep the states united.
So the two "causes" of the Civil War: the south's demand to keep slavery and the North's rejection of the secession.
The two were intertwined, but there would have been no war, if the south's insistence upon keeping slaves hadn't divided the nation into "north vs. south" in the first place.
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