Right on both counts, sheltonmac. The Northern soldier fought to preseve the Union. The southern soldier? Well he was motivated by other concerns.
If you truly believe that the southern soldier fought for states rights or tariff relief, then you are either ignoring or haven't bothered to read the speeches and writings of the time. The long and short of it is that the southern soldier fought to preserve his place in society's pecking order. He fought to keep 3.9 million black people in bondage because the idea of what 3.9 million free black people - people who could vote and live where they wanted and compete for jobs and farmland - was terrifying. And the local press and leadership knew that and used it to whip up their sentiments. Southern politicians and southern newspapers used the abolitionist threat to whip up popular opinion in the south, and it wasn't because the poor southern white man aspired to slave ownership. Governor Brown of Georgia summed up the position. Slavery, he said, "is the poor mans's best government. Among us the poor white laberor...does not belong to the menial class. The Negro is no sense his equal...He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.. Thus yeoman farmers will never consent to abolition rule, for they know that in the event of the abolition of slavery they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who would be able to protect themselves." An Alabama newspaper wrote that the election of Lincoln "shows that the North intends to free the negroes and force amalgamation between them and the children of poor white men of the south." A Georgia secessionist asked, "Do you love your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter?...In ten years or less our children will be slaves of the negro." James Furman of South Carolina warned, "Abolition preachers will be at hand to consumate the marriage of your daughter to black husbands." In Alabama they were asked, "Submit to having our wives and daughters choose between death and gratifying the hellish lust of the Negro?...Better ten thousand deaths than submission to Black Republicanism." Those are but a few of the quotes that make it clear that southern secessionist leaders used the equality of white men and their superiority over the black man as their rallying cry. Southern men marched off in rebellion to protect their way of life and the biggest threat that they saw to it, regardless of their social status, was an end to slavery and freedom for the black man.
Might I inquire where you got this? About 30% of southerners owned slaves at least in Texas and Louisiana.