This may be true of contemporary Confederate sympathizers, but it wasn't true of the Confederacy. Why did the southern states choose that precise point in history -- after the election of Abraham Lincoln -- to leave the Union? It had nothing to do with an abhorance of "big government" (it was result of the Civil War that the federal government grew; a big, centralized federal government was not an issue when Lincoln became President). It had everything to do with the shrinking political base of the slave states, the momentum of free soil sentiment in Congress, the tip in the balance of power in Congress away from slave states, and the election of a Republican President.
It is true that Lincoln's initial justification for the war was to perserve the Union, but in the end, after the Emancipation Proclamation, it became a war to save the Union, AND to end slavery. And both those who fought for the north, and for the south, knew it. Lincoln and his supporters were ridiculed by anti-abolitionists (all Democrats, BTW) as a "Black Republicans" for their support for the end of slavery.
Contemporary libertarians who might find heroes in the Confederacy to promote their views of federalism and states rights undercut their arguments by adopting icons that were less interested in the cause of liberty, and more interested in preserving their "peculiar institution" of slavery. I've always been of the opinion that had the Confederacy been about preservation of the Constitution, states rights, and liberty against a growing national government, they might have had a point. But since these things were used, primarily, as justifications for protecting slavery, their position is untenable.
Hey, wait a minute. Only days ago I was assured in quite unsoothing tones that Lincoln's election wasn't an issue in the secession. Heck, he wasn't even a real abolitionist!
Now you mean to tell me that it was, and he was?
Gasp! I've been lied to by those wily scholars of Southern history!
LOL! Gird your loins for yet another round of confederate non-scholarship....
The states right argument ignores the entire history leading up to the Civil War. The balance Senate, slave as a 2/3 vote, Ohio Valley Territories, Texas “Lone Star”, were all about preserving an alliance that formed to defeat the British in 1776.
It cannot be denied that one of the significant motivating factors on the part of the capital owning establishment in the South was preserving the investment value of their slave property. They clearly and properly felt threatened by the slave/non-slave division and since this group put up much of the wealth in support of defense of the war, their participation was essential and was motivated in large part by the slave ownership capital position.
The language your post lifts from the secession documents and from the constitution of the confederation is addressed to the slave owning class to solicit their support for these reasons and these are, as you well recognize, political documents.
Had the war not ensued, would the north have abolished slavery in 1862? I think not. Did the south need to defend the war (or for that matter to secede) to avoid termination of slavery? I think not also. Had the south folded on the immediate political issue, there would have been no war and no abolition in the 1862 time frame either.
There were certainly a number of reasons why the south was prepared to fight at that instant in time; and as to part of the political coalition that funded and organized the south's defense, the implications of the long term threat to slavery were certainly an important factor.
However a careful look from a historical perspective leaves us with some other thoughts. For one thing, it is indisputable that slavery was a doomed institution by 1860, whether or not the war was fought. The defense offered above of the economics of the most important export is not well founded--the cotton gin would make slave labor uneconomic. It is also indisputable that the immediate direct result of the war was a substantial decline in the standard of living of the slaves. Not in any way intended as a defense of slavery, even for the short period between Emancipation and the probable end of slavery without the war.
Under the circumstances, the most significant modern consequence of the war is the decline in legal significance of the constitutional relationship among the states and the federal government. The compact of individual freedom that was the foundation of the War of Independence was effectively abrogated.
It is also beyond any argument that the significant motivating factor that led to initiation of armed conflict in the war was collection of tarriffs which were devastating to the economy of the southern states; benefited the aggressors directly; in exactly the kind of abuse of the collective power of the majority to exact benefits from the minority that the state power provisions of the constitution were designed to give the minority the power to defeat--by the threat to withdraw from the union in the ultimate extreme.
So when you sum up Lincoln and the defining event of his life, there is no doubt that he was a brillent man and one of the great lawyers of American history; probably the smartest president. But the war was a great waste in American history and the argument that the country is worse off today because it was fought has great merit.
If you can't secede you are a slave.