Let's examine the issue further.
That's one of those rights of the people you were mentioning. In this case the slave owner is the person with rights to the services of the slave.
The usual Lost Cause claim is that the Southern states seceded and attacked Fort Sumter not because of slavery at all, but because the federal government was usurping "states' rights."
(1) The only right Southerners convincingly claimed was being violated was the right to recover escaped slaves, as you have so well described. So multiple "rights" were not being violated - the entire controversy revolved around slaveholding and slaveholding alone.
(2) The right to recover escaped slaves was a personal right and not a "state right" - an individual South Carolinian slaveholder, and not the state of South Carolina, was the one with legal standing to assert such a right. Therefore, not only were multiple "rights" not being violated but really only one, no "state right" was being violated at all.
(3) The federal government in its legislative capacity passed the Fugitive Slave Act. The federal government in its judicial capacity approved the Fugitive Slave Act. The federal government in its executive capacity enforced the Fugitive Slave Act by sending federal agents into the northern states. Not only were multiple "rights" not being violated, not only were no "state rights" being violated in any way, the right in question was not being usurped by the federal government - it was being strenuously defended by the federal government in every way.
The offending parties were Northern states - not the federal government - and the entire issue was that Southern states interpreted the requirements of the federal statute in the way most favorable to Southern popular opinion and the Northern states interpreted the requirements of the federal statute in the way most favorable to Northern popular opinion.
Far from being grounds for rebellion or secession, this dispute over slavery - and that's precisely what is was, a dispute over slavery and nothing else - was a matter for the courts, much like other national disputes between states over land claims, etc.
The high-flying Lost Cause rhetoric that "the War Between The States was not about slavery, it was about states' rights" is resoundingly hollow and false.
And, as a practical matter, the uproar over fugitive slaves was just a minor aspect of the larger slavery agenda - the motive behind secession and war was the South's desire to expand slaveholding to the federal territories and the knowledge that the South did not have enough votes to ensure that the organization of the federal territories would go their way.
You're welcome and the same back at you. I apologize for the length of my reply below.
The usual Lost Cause claim is that the Southern states seceded and attacked Fort Sumter not because of slavery at all, but because the federal government was usurping "states' rights."
I think slavery was the main issue that led to the war, or perhaps the "occasion" that led to the war. It was not the only issue. The protectionist tariff and other sectional aggrandizement by the North were issues as well, but it was easier to work up the Southern public for a separation over slavery than other issues.
As Alexander Stevens, vice president of the CSA, stated in his 1868-70 book, "A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States":
It is a postulate, with many writers of this day, that the late War was the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African Slavery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the "irrepressible conflict," in principle, which ended in the terrible conflict of arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize upon it, are but superficial observers.
...the opposing principles which produced these results in physical action were of a very different character from those assumed in the postulate. ... The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as the Government of the States. The contest was between those who held it to be strictly Federal in its character, and those who maintain it was thoroughly National. It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centeralism, or Consolidation, on the other.
Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles, which had been in conflict, from the beginning, on diverse other questions, were finally brought into actual and active collision with each other on the field of battle.
Some view the above as post-war whitewash used to minimize the role that slavery played in bringing about the war. Perhaps it was. I know of his Cornerstone speech. In my reading of a few pre-war Southern newspapers, slavery issues were often front and center. But slavery wasn't the only issue.
There were fundamental differences between North and South in how the Constitution was viewed (the old conflict between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists) and between the Democrats of the time and other parties. Here's how some Northern Democrats (or Copperheads if you will) saw it in 1864:
The great principle now in issue, is the centralization of power, or the keeping it diffused in State sovereignty, as it is by the organic laws, constituting States and forming the General Government.
... The great boast of the Democratic party, has been, that it has met and beaten back the party of centralization, since the formation of the Union; and though it has never ordained any principles in regard to the status of the inferior races, it has at all times strictly adhered to the doctrine of making it a purely local matter, and leaving to the States, by the exercise of their reserved powers, to regulate it as a domestic institution ...
I looked up that quote in my old archived posts and found it as a part of a long, interesting, civil discussion about these issues with a pro-Northern poster I respected, capitan_refugio (since banned). The discussion starts here. I commend it to you.
(1) The only right Southerners convincingly claimed was being violated was the right to recover escaped slaves, as you have so well described. So multiple "rights" were not being violated - the entire controversy revolved around slaveholding and slaveholding alone.
Not the entire controversy. A couple of the state secession documents refer to sectional aggrandizement by Northern states. For example, Congress was spending money on extensive studies of the Great Lakes and not fully reimbursing Texas for using its own troops to fight Indians and Mexican invaders, a Federal responsibility under the Constitution.
Protectionist tariffs had the effect of extracting wealth from the South for the benefit of Northern manufacturers and providing jobs for northern workers. Put a pencil to paper sometime and you'll see how much this amounted to. Here is what the Daily Chicago Times said on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
The Morrill Tariff which greatly increased protectionist tariffs had been passed by the House in 1860 and was likely to be passed by the new Senate in 1861 even if all Southern senators had remained. A head count by Texas Senator Wigfall had that conclusion. Here is what the New Orleans Daily Picayune said on April 3, 1861, right after the Senate passed it:
Some months ago we said to the Northern party, "You sought sectional aggrandizement, and had no scruples as to the means and agencies by which to attain your unhallowed purposes. You paid no heed to the possible consequences of your insane conduct." The fact was then patent that the condition in the bond by which the Northern protectionist party gave its weight and influence in aid of Black Republicanism was the imposition by the party of a protectionist tariff. The South was to be fleeced that the North might be enriched.
Having driven the South to resistance, instead of adopting a policy of conciliation, it added to the existing exasperation by adopting a tariff as hostile as could be to Southern interests. The estrangement of North and South was not sufficiently marked and intense. New fuel must be added to the fires of strife, new incentives to embittered feelings.
Southern states were being taken advantage of. If the Union no longer comported to their happiness and economic well being, Southern states felt they had the right under the Tenth Amendment (the Tenth being the basis of so-called "state's rights") to leave the old voluntary union and form a more perfect union of their own (where have I heard that before).
And, as a practical matter, the uproar over fugitive slaves was just a minor aspect of the larger slavery agenda - the motive behind secession and war was the South's desire to expand slaveholding to the federal territories and the knowledge that the South did not have enough votes to ensure that the organization of the federal territories would go their way.
Under Republican party positions, a huge amount of territory was to be reserved for non slave holders, perhaps a relic of the old Northern Free Soil party which reserved land to their constituents without competition from slave holders. Well, that is what political parties do, I guess, award the people who voted for them. Some 81% of the huge Louisiana Territory, which had originally been a slaveholding area, was made off limits to slavery. With slavery excluded from such large areas, the Southern interest in protecting slavery, the basis of their economy, would be in great danger in the future. There would be more free states in the future, thus endangering the future of the Southern economy.
I've read somewhere that the value of slaves on the market took a big hit when Lincoln was elected. For similar reasons that their influence was declining, New England states threatened secession when the Louisiana Purchase expanded the area of slavery (later legislated away) and when slave state of Texas was added to the Union.
Here is what Jefferson Davis said in the Senate on January 10, 1861 about the access of Southern slave holders to the territories.:
Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support.