Mitch writes a fascinating article summing up many of the macro economic challenges of electing to go to war in the American Civil War.
This combined with an article on Strategies is a great start to a cool series her is the Southern Strategy:
Southern Strategy
Sorry, Kev. Too much neoconfederate nonsense for me.
Good reads on those linked articles! One thing for sure, you can definitely see where the Southern states came from when they said the break was over States Rights.
The Southern states believed in states rights only for the South. Look at the compromise of 1850. States that had abolished Slavery were told that Slave owners had the right to go into Free states and take alleged slaves even if they did not have proof.