Jefferson Davis' Resolutions on the Relations of States, Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol, February 2, 1860, From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 6, pp. 273-76. Even the preamble of the Confederate Constitution begins with "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character..." At the end of the day it was about slavery, but for them it was their states right to engage in slavery.... amongst other issues.
I think the South portrayed more than just that. For years they were consistently complaining about laws that favored the North and stifled the South. The Wilmot Proviso in 1846, Senator Lewis Cass' idea of popular sovereignty in the late 1840's, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and had negative perceptions by Southerners. Whether they had an actual impact on them was irrelevant, it was their perceptions of them and how they favored the North that had them waving the states rights card. About the only thing they were clearly in favor of was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. I'm not arguing the fact that the war was about slavery, for me it was. Some people to this day will deny that and claim it was about states rights. The fact is if slavery hadn't existed then the war would have never been fought.
Right, but most of the reason for those laws were due to the South's support of slavery. "States rights" is not an analogy for "northern aggression".
Yeah, you're absolutely right, but it was the Southern states using the guise of states rights to keep slavery intact.
But I don't think it was a guise - I think everyone understood that's what was intended. After all, Alexander Stephens publicly said so at his inauguration. And if you look at the Jefferson Davis language, it references a duty "to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to person or property" - which seems pretty clear. I just don't see the historical backing for the states rights claim - that was the legal covering for slavery. It certainly wasn't the popular one.
Actually, there was long a movement in Europe that aimed to end the conflict, even if it meant seeing the union split into two. The British had no qualms about getting involved as was the intentions by its government leaders. The striking workers in British cities meant little since they were largely disenfranchised at that point in time.