Exactly. A war for state rights, that is how the Southrens viewed it. The issue of slavery was secondary.
Right !
In Northern schools( that may still teach history), we were taught that the Civil War was all about slavery.
NOT SO !!
It wasn't until years deeply into the Civil War that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation,
a tactic designed to, free slaves only in the South so that the Confederates would be fighting two fronts :
1)the Federalist Union soldiers on the battleground ;and
2) a second front at home in the South, by newly freed slaves who would take up arms against the South.
In the North , a slavery labor force was not common, although it existed , but the Emacipation proclmation did not apply to slaves north of Mason-Dixson line.
So the Civil War history that I had learned in the North wasn't accurate ;
the Confederate "Stars and Bars" was really a rally flag for "States Rights" , and slavery was only a secondary,later issue .
The media consider the Confederate flag as a racial issue ; which shows that " History is re-written by the winners".
My friend from Alabama suggests that the last century and a half is a temporary truce ('while they re-arm ').
States rights to do what? One of the southern insurrectionists complaints was that northern states didn’t support slavery in their own state boundary.
The slave states were for oppressive federal government power in free states to be exerted to enforce slavery.
The insurrection was started to further and extend slavery, in opposition to the northern state authority to ban slavery in their own territory, and to elect government officials in accordance with the constitution.
The insurrection was put down to restore the Union.