I don't think the CSA was showing much foresight when it chose to secede and to invoke the principle of states' rights over its "peculiar institution."
If the South had chosen to invoke states' rights and secede over the nullification controversy a generation before, that might have been different.
Essentially, the South was impetuous and jumped the gun. Lincoln was conciliatory upon his election. He offered compromise and the preservation of Southern customs.
Rather than give him a chance to govern and to work with the South, secession began before he was even sworn in.
And anyone with foresight would have known that since Northern whites outnumbered Southern whites 3 to 1, there was no chance that the new states organized out of the territories would have had sustainable pro-slavery majorities. Secession meant either going to war interminably in the future over those territories or cutting themselves off from westward expansion altogether.
As it turned out, there was nothing noble about destroying states' rights and dismantling our constitutional republic.
States' rights are not destroyed, but they certainly are attenuated. And the republic has not been dismantled either.
It's our job to try and repair the damage, not throw up our hands and surrender.
I will concede - as did men like Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson - that the South should have freed the slaves before resorting to secession. However, that doesn't mean secession wasn't within their rights as free and independent states.