I want to dispell a misconception that keeps getting spread as a gotcha. It was never about states rights. No not even states right to slavery. It was about the preservations AND expansion of slavery. States did not and were not allowed to ban slavery. Read the consitution of the confederacy. It is almost a copy and paste of the US constitution but with minor changes that both empower and disempower the executive branch, but also banning the outlaw of slavery among one or two other slavery stuff. If it was about states rights to slavery, they would allow their states to ban it cause it would be their right to choose. But it was never that, they wanted slavery to expand. Even if you add the caveate of slavery to the "states right" myth, you are still perpetuating the myth. Just a less savory version of the myth.

The only way it was about states rights was how it was about establishing slavery as a right that could not be infringed.