Historians to this day still debate how to frame the civil war period, depending on what they see as the most significant causes. when would you say the civil war truly began?

There's no perfect answer to this question (even the question acknowledges this problem). In my opinion, the U.S. was put on a path to Civil War the very moment the U.S. Constitution was signed. The Constitution brought a bunch of colonies into a union together, even though some of those colonies relied heavily on slavery and believed that slavery was morally defensible, while others did not rely on slavery and believed that slavery was a terrible thing. It was only a matter of time before the debate over slavery turned into a violent clash over slavery.