From that I would say they would have established a Coup an taken the Presidency by force, but they meant to control the whole nation.
I read the other day, that Southerners saw that the factory system changed the Northrn culture and that the factory owners lied about , as Lincoln said, "work for a year, and then work for yourself, hiring others". Once you went to work for the factory you were stuck. Remember the old saying "By the time I knew better , I was too broke to quit"? That saying must have came from a Northerner realizing the factory system was not a good thing.
As early as 1850 they realized that the "American Dream" was gone.