I get your point, but I'm not so sure that citing Gen. Lee is correct. It was the politicians and economically powerful citizens of the states that formed the Confederacy and seceded.
Lee was a soldier who happened to be from Virginia and Virginia was part of it. From what I recall reading he struggled mightily with the question.
Me. not tilting so much as maybe just picking nits. And if the South had won permanetn sessesion, the "nation state" that they desired to create would very likely, anctually more likely, have become an "entrenched nation state" governed by a powerful permanent government. That seems to be what they desired. Authoritarian policy making.
It was the percieved sins of popular democracy in the North that more than anything caused them to attempt to leave. They were very likely getting hosed by New York banks and New England shippers and inland industrialists and agricultural interests, and egged on by European interests who didn't like trading and dealing with the new giant of American production and commerce without getting "the cut" they'd been used to for centuries, but the story to come out of of it that the nation has taken forward was that it was about political pressure for emancipation and equality. That probably wasn't all it, but I doubt that the Confederate States of America would have become some bastion of personal liberty and egalitarian opportunity across all class lines..
