I appreciate many of your insights.
I do agree that the secession effort was not a unified movement with a sole cause but rather some politicians with various motives who gained leverage. Yet, the same can be said of the northern opposition and most human events.
When I say slavery was a blight on our history, I do not mean we are uniquely guilty. I mean human history. The fact that it was in the bible does not justify it - humans should not enslave one another.
My whole rant was intended to make the opposite point. Slavery was/is wrong wherever it existed/exists, but pointing the finger at the south is ridiculous and sad. The reason the south continues to get blamed and shamed for it (and for the war) is because they LOST the war, and the North as the winner gets to write their self-serving version of history.
If the South had won, a completely different version of history would be taught to our children - probably one that placed less emphasis on the platitude of “preserving the union” and more emphasis on the founding principle of limiting the authority of a central government. Meanwhile, slavery would be long gone, the South’s legitimate economic grievances would have been addressed and secession would have been avoided.
Perhaps then, with the Southern version of history being taught to our children we wouldn’t have been so stupid as to grow the federal government into the monstrosity it is today.
How could secession have been avoided if the South had won? If the South had won, secession would have been an accomplished fact.
If the South had won and the Confederacy became independent, either they'd eventually develop their own powerful central government, different in its activities than what we have today perhaps, but equally controlling and domineering, or they'd have entrenched local oligarchies which would also be controlling and domineering.
Because the South lost and was subjugated, Southerners were critical of big government. If they'd won and Southern elites had nothing to stand in their way, they'd throw their weight around just as any victorious elite does.