There's a romanticism of lost causes that makes people think that those who lost in history were better and nobler than those who won.
The short form of this argument is "So's your old man, and you're another." It's a fallacy, an argument ad hominem tendered in the absence of evidence that an independent South would have followed the same, or a worse, road than the United States has done. Without getting into recriminatory argle-bargle, let me just say that the form of your argument is defective, in that 1) it consists of a known fallacy, and 2) is beside the point. The point is, the Southerners had the right to create their own future, whether better or worse -- and Abraham Lincoln denied them their future by violent force, in order to compel them to remain in the Union to become his policy objects.
I still don't believe that victory for the segregationists would have been better than their defeat.
Well, that is a discussion for another thread, anyway, and I tend to be neutral on that subject anyway. I think there are a lot of loose ends in equity to the history of the civil rights movement (such as the egregious statistics I quoted above), but overall it's a completely different situation in several ways from the 1860's.
Given the century that it took us to get rid of segregation even in a larger country that helped to diffuse racial problems, it's likely that racial conflicts, problems and repression would have been greater in an independent Confederacy. It's also the case that Confederate apologists blame the winning side for all the corruption, expansionism and imperialism that came later. But had the war ended differently these things wouldn't have been avoided, and would have been attributed to the victorious Confederacy.
Did the South have the "right to create their own future?" I suppose this is true in the end of any people. But how one goes about achieving this is of great importance. It was important to go through legitimate, constitutional channels. A unilateral declaration of secession or independence would necessarily be contested, because it left too many consitutional and practical questions unanswered. Violence would lead to violence in return. With more patience, the South might have achieved their independence, though I don't think that would have been a good thing. The war was a tragedy, and war would have happened in any case, as the two groups struggled over the border states and Western territories. I don't think anything is gained by turning it into a melodrama with Lincoln as villain.
I wish that the war hadn't happened. My first impulse would be to say, "Let those who want to leave, leave." But once the shooting started, it would tear apart the border states and the country as federal and rebel factions asserted their own legitimacy and tried to force their will on their states. An alternative to the standard Confederate line is to see Lincoln as trying to maintain legimacy and constitutional and democratic processes in a situation careening towards anarchy, war and atrocity.
There are at least two ways to self-determination. The first is rebellion against an oppressor who allows you no representation or voice in your own rule. The second is to work through representative, constitutional institutions to attain your independence. Confusing the two is a deadly mistake. The secessionists believed that they had a third alternative of unilateral secession at will. This option was contested, but it ought to have been recognized that the question of how to dispose of our common federal properties and what to do about states with disputed governments or election returns, would make this a much messier option than it appeared to be at first.
The Bill of Rights applied to the federal government. It did not guarantee the individual's rights against infringement by the states. That is why the 14th amendment was passed -- to ensure that states would not violate the basic rights of persons without due process. The amendment has been misused at times, but there's a strong case to be made for its desirability.
What would the founders have thought of the 14th Amendement? Would they have seen it as a completion of their design or as a betrayal of it? It's a good question, and it's hard to resolve. But one shouldn't bias it by giving Jefferson or the anti-Federalists more weight than the framers themselves. It would also be wrong to presume that what the founders wanted was simply an alliance of wholly sovereign states. They'd found the Articles of Confederation to be deficient, and had taken a big step away from state sovereignty.
There is always some crime and barbarism at the bottom of society. Someone has to protect the community against such violence or illegality. And we do endeavor to do that. But I don't think this sanctions repression of whole ethnic groups.
Perhaps if we have a generation of true racial horrors, crime on the scale of South Africa or higher, it might be taken by more people as a justification for earlier repression. But I don't quite see that as our present condition. It does seem to me even by your statistics Black crime does fall most heavily on other Blacks and that most non-Blacks have been able to avoid it.
If you want to draw a parallel between today's black crime and yesterday's lynching of Blacks, also bear in mind the role that law enforcement had in not preventing or in allowing those lynchings. If today's police turned over whites to black mobs or left them at the mercy of such mobs, your analogy would be closer to the mark.
There is little to chose between bullying, violent Blacks and Whites. But there is a great deal of difference between police who back up the bullying and those who try to prevent it. Today's bullying by government agencies dealing with quotas and racism will be weighed against our age, but I doubt it affects the balance to a great degree. If I had been directly affected by interracial violent crime I might think differently, though.
People overlook the enormous change in work relationships (and therefore in class and civic relationships) that was wrought by the introduction of large, integrated companies and their work rules and time clocks. Some sociologists have noticed.....but as upper-crusty, highly-educated intellectuals, they don't care.
This is true, and valuable. People who presume that, but for Lincoln we would have freedoms on an 18th or 19th century scale, neglect the massive changes in society. We have lost the frontier, and family households are no longer self-sufficient. We are part of a system that makes us richer and perhaps safer, but also more dependent, more submissive and more passive. The Rockwellite idea that without Lincoln, libertarians would walk the earth, free, proud, erect and uncowed, looks to me to be seriously flawed. As likely a result would be smaller, powerful, oppressive, bitterly hostile political units. Or else something like what we have now -- an urbanized or suburbanized population that accepts what the authorities allow and avoids what they forbid.
You do not convince me that secession was truly about freedom, rather than about power. If one puts up a far distant perimeter around one's interests and argues that any infringement of that perimeter is a violation of your liberties, one may convince one's self that one's freedom is at stake. Others will disagree. Wisconsin might feel that any step away from butter to margarine or Shedd's Spread is a violation of their powers, interests and freedom, but it wouldn't justify a shooting war.
For many Southerners, any limitation of slavery, even by the exercise of "state's rights" in Northern states, was a dagger at the heart of the institution and a knife at their throats. But outsiders don't have to see things that way. They might also consider the Northern belief that if the slaveowners got their own way, it would be the end of Northern liberties.
The fact that disputes on the periphery of the central issue came to be seen as battles over that issue is what contributed to the war. For your distant periphery is also my periphery, and what you desire to keep your central institutions safe may be seen by me as a threat to my basic institutions.
I will grant that this "house divided against itself" was bound to fall, but I don't think one can argue that Southerners were entirely concerned about freedom or that their grievances can all be filed under "Liberties, concerns about loss of."
Your case against empire and larger political units and more distant governments is a good one and bears closer examination. Where I differ is first of all in not assuming that pre-Lincoln America didn't have its own imperial tendencies. The Confederate leadership itself was taken from the more militaristic and imperialistic segments of society, and it struggled to create an effective and unified nation against recalcitrant state governments.
Arguably, too, the "Old Republic" and the "settled arrangement of the Constitution" broke down in 1860. Whatever replaced it would be different -- as different after a Confederate victory or an amicable settlement as after a union victory.
Secondly, the question of the means one uses to attain independence or localization is important. Violence to win independence for this region or state is only a last resort. I don't think it was justified in 1860.
Third is the question of groups that assert their own rights to freedom and oppress other groups. It may be that we have no choice but to allow them to do so, on the grounds of majority rule, self-determination, and legitimacy. It may also be that all societies rely on differences in power and status, relative empowerment and relative subjugation. But morally, I don't think that we should celebrate a society that demands its own freedom and holds others in bondage. One may grant their right to independence and self-government, but I don't want to make excuses for such a regime and throw blame on others that may have had serious problems and injustices, but were on the whole less oppressive.
One can find mitigating circumstances for the Confederacy, and one can find vices in their opponents. But one shouldn't ignore the vices of the rebel leaders themselves. One can admire the courage with which soldiers and officers fought for their cause, but I draw the line at making political heroes out of the Confederate leadership.