So they instead chose to degrade themselves by violating the Constitution?
The South seceded for slavery. The Confederacy was never about anything else.
Au contraire. You aren't taking into account the four states which seceded due to Lincoln's demand for troops. From the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession:
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
South Carolina’s ordinance of secession had a flaw: it told the truth. Slavery, Slavery, Slavery! Of course in the cold light of the morning after other states realized that telling the truth was, shall we say, messy and embarrassing. So they tried to avoid being honest. But too late, the truth was out. Messed everything up, too. Outside of that central German superpower, the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, no foreign country was willing to recognize the Confederacy. Why? Because the Europeans considered slavery a barbaric practice. As did most countries in the New World.
As for the northern degrading itself, how? The northern states weren’t engaging in slavery. If you want to look for people degrading themselves, look at the slavers, the ones who were raping and tormenting slaves. They’re the ones degrading themselves. They’re the ones who were running the Confederacy.