Unfortunately no initiative was forthcoming from the “leadership” of the south, who instead deliberately set out on their disastrous plan to immortalize the “peculiar institution”.
I’m not sure what “unhealthy self-righteous attitude” exclusive to the north you are referring to - I think that there have been plenty of such attitudes all around.
The antislavery elements in the South did not lead the Confederacy, oddly enough. John Brown helped stifle abolition sentiment in the South. He explicitly called for freed slaves to rise up and murder Southern whites, the way he had kill proslavery partisans in Kansas. When he took over Harpers Ferry, he had 1,500 spears with him that he intended to distributed to the slaves who arose to join him on which to impale their former masters.
When a man is riding a tiger, the way to get him to dismount is not to tell him he deserves to be eaten.