[Ditto]

...the advice of Thomas Jefferson...

Thomas Jefferson sure didn't see eye to eye with the Confederates.

It was Lincoln who was the disciple of Jefferson, not the Confederates who rejected all that Jefferson stood for.

The new constitution [Confederate States of America] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition.

This, our new government,[Confederate States of America] is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
-- Alexander Stevens, Vice President, Confederate States of America.

[wideawake]

Excellent post.

Stephens, Rhett, Atchison, Toombs - and even their ideological godfather Calhoun - advocated an ideology specifically based on race, not on universal natural rights like Jefferson, Washington and Franklin.

The whole notion of "states rights" (an oxymoron) was a fig leaf. Just try and get a single apologist for the Confederacy to delineate which specific "rights" of any of the slave states were being violated by the federal government.

They have no concrete answer - just vague generalities.