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Yes it was a power struggle. Votes in the senate mattered a lot (for those economic arguments) so long as the Southern states were in. Once they were no longer in the US, there was no need for votes in the Senate and no concern with spreading slavery. The power struggle was over.

And the reason why they gave up and left the U.S., leaving the power struggle behind, was because of slavery. Which brings us back to the initial error pointed out in the plaque.

It was the era of Manifest Destiny and that held true for both the US and the CSA. Were there bound to be some expansionist sentiments in the CSA as there had been and still were in the USA? Of course. That’s imperialism/expansionism. That’s not some holy crusade to expand slavery. Cuba already had slaves.

And the Confederate Constitution guaranteed those territories would be slave territories and the states made out of them would be slave states. Non-slave territories and non-slave states were prohibited. Which is why the Corwin amendment held no interest to them; it didn't protect slavery to the extent their new constitution did.

And the reason why they gave up and left the U.S., leaving the power struggle behind, was because of slavery. Which brings us back to the initial error pointed out in the plaque.

No, the reason they left was economics...specifically the tariff, unequal expenditures and ever growing usurpation of power by the federal government - in which they knew they would always be outvoted.

And the Confederate Constitution guaranteed those territories would be slave territories and the states made out of them would be slave states. Non-slave territories and non-slave states were prohibited. Which is why the Corwin amendment held no interest to them; it didn’t protect slavery to the extent their new constitution did.

“. . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .

“The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . .

“. . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders’ reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)