The Confederate South had reasons to secede, and they are numerous. The Confederate South did not win the war. There is actually an Amendment to the Constitution which directly addresses slavery. Slavery was not considered a violation of "freedom" in the original Constitution, but provision was made for it to start to end.
Beyond that, everything is distoriton. A good case in point is commentator Roland Martin of CNN on Anderston Cooper 360. It starts about half-way down.
CNN.com - Transcripts
On the one hand, the original Secession was about the independence of the Southern States from the rest of it all. At issue was were the legal agreements and decisions regarding slavery. The famous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision had come down against slaves, in support of the slave owners. The Abolitionists were not seen as likely to be supportive of abiding by the Supreme Court decision, and the other rules.
The Secession of the South is better said the irrelevance of that region to what was then the United States of America. The Law Of The Land was not going to applied on their behalf.
Being Southerners, they did manage to split the Democratic Party vote. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected, mostly with support from the Abolitionist regions. It was not a "De Jure," end of slavery. It was clearly perceived as a "De Facto" kind of end of slavery. Southerners, literally, would have no further Civil Rights regarding their property. The Supreme Court decisions were easily said to be of no concern to the Abolitionists. They had won! The Law was ridiculous, and it was the law of United States, 1860.
Not just planters would be alarmed at the likely impending, turn of events. Millions of Freed Slaves, on the labor market, would effectively destroy the economy of the South. When South Carolina bombed Fort Sumter, the response at the White House was to send in troops. No attempt would be made to isolate the incident, call for a national unity conference, reaffirm the Constitutional guarantees of property, and slave ownership: Or any other measures of reconciliation.
Lincoln called up the troops.
Lincoln had clear plans to kill them all. In the event of overnight Abolition: Any white child of the time could compute that their value to that new labor market would be about an apple a month. That was about real apples, not computers. Even when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation: The newly freed were requesed to work for a living wage, "when allowed."
Even Lincoln could understand about the half-cent a month kind of labor that was going to be on the market.
And so in the linked transcript, emotions run amok and no understanding of the condition of the Slaves or the Slaveholders--or the Southern White Middle Class--is even attempted, even by Anderson Cooper.
Notoriously, CNN is already famous for the ratings "war" it faces with the advertising community. It has none, and they all know.
"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Stupid Man Lincoln make smoke: Even in new media, telegraph, civilization!)
