Well, it’s certainly true that they were in danger of becoming second-class citizens. The reason is because chattel slavery could not hope to compete with industrialization, but there was so much money wrapped up in slaves and plantations that the South couldn’t afford to just end it all. When it began to look like abolitionism, even gradually phased in, would rob them of their “property rights” by freeing all those slaves, the South felt it had no choice but to defend its “way of life.”

Yet, it was that poor level of industrialization and over-reliance on slave labor that proved to be the South’s undoing. It had to rely upon Britain and France for much of the materiel necessary to wage war, and once the Union blockade squeezed down upon Southern ports, the countdown to the defeat of their “cause” began to speed up.