Am I correct in saying that the confederates supported the right thing, a confederacy, for the wrong reason, racism?

Amendment X
>The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

>it didn't allow it
It doesn't need to. It doesn't prohibit, therefore each state may decide for itself.

Cool fantasy Yas Forumsro. Read a book on constitutional law next time.

>Read a book on constitutional law
Try reading the actual constitution.

Buckle up for the economic explanation.

The Union (the North) was less rich in agricultural resources than the South, so they were forced to industrialise in order to compete economically.
An industrial economy requires a market system based on supply and demand in order to function, due to the nature of industrial capital and how it is used. Labour in an industrial market society must be mobile and available to satisfy demand wherever it arises, so it must represented by a class of proletarian workers, i.e. labourers who compete in the labour market, work for salaries and are personally free to move around.
An industrial economy also requires a unified domestic market with total freedom of movement for labour (workers) within its boundaries, as well as relatively uniform economic legislation regarding land and capital.
This essentially means that states have to follow similar rules and allow free movement across their borders, which represents a certain loss of their individual rights.
But as compensation, they can become a powerful economic and military unit as a result.

The Southern states, on the other hand, were agricultural economies that were based on autarkic principles rather than market principles. Autarky essentially means self-sufficiency and subsistence production instead of market specialisation. Autarkic agricultural economies don't need a labour market or free movement of labour, so they can get away with using slaves to do the work. Since every autarkic economy is relatively closed and functions within its own particular world, it's interested in keeping its own rules and control over borders ("state rights").

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Conflict emerges because industrial market societies eventually need to expand and find new markets, whereas autarkic societies are interested in maintaining sovereignty, because joining a market system would put them at a disadvantage.
Upon joining a market system, new territories are placed at the "periphery" of the system and are economically at the mercy of the "core, where all the capital and infrastructure is.

The issue of slavery and the issue of state rights (confederation/union) were really part of one and the same issue: the question of what kind of socio-economic system the American states would pursue.
For an industrial market society, slavery is evil because slavery prevents free movement of labour: slaves can't function within a labour market. State rights are also evil because differences in state economic legislation also prevent free movement of capital and labour.
For an agricultural autarkic society, slavery is good because it's cheap and convenient, and state rights are good because they protect them from encroachment by external forces and interests.

The North pursued the model of industrial market society, which gave them an advantage over the South because it allowed them to centralise resources and distribute them efficiently. The North was interested in integrating the South into its market system because market systems are based on expansion.
The Southern States were originally quite strong independently due to their natural resources, but as soon as they were defeated by the North they became shitholes and never recovered, due to the fact that they were assimilated as peripheries.
The function of the periphery is to provide the more developed and industrialised core (in this case, the North) with resources, and to consume their products, which makes the periphery economically dependent and disadvantaged.

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