Clueless. To continue slavery, all they had to do was remain in the Union. Here's the bottom-line facts: Yankees traded in human beings as a commodity, and Lincoln wanted a lily-white west.
"Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them." - Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
And Jeff Davis wanted a lily white south.
Utter bull. Learn some history. The Radical Republicans had massive power in the Senate and House and Lincoln was an aboliltionist. The South seceded when he was elected president for a reason, and that reason was they saw a Constitutional amendment coming that would abolish slavery. They didn't like that and decided that since the will of the people of the United States wasn't going their way, they'd just declare the Constitution null and void and start their own country.
By the way, this was not a new tactic. The South had made rumblings in the past about starting a war if slavery was in any way abolished or restricted. The Fugitive Slave law and the Great Compromise were both responses to try and stop that from happening. It only delayed the inevitable because the majority of Americans WERE moving to end slavery, but the entrenched aristocracy of the south was going to go to hell before they let it happen in their states.