I agree that perceptions of rights were intimately involved in this situation. Southerners did believe that their "rights" were in jeopardy, if not already denied. However, we cannot water the discussion down to where the issues and concerns specific to 1860 are simply portrayed as "rights." The Civil War would become so generic as to be indistinguishable from other conflicts.

I do agree with Stephen, to an extent, that a principled approach to rights was part of the issue. But, men and women in 1860, in northern and southern states, had very specific ideas of what "rights" they enjoyed and what "rights" were denied or challenged. They did not operate in a vaccuum, or a sanitized, legal courtroom of Constitutional ideology. They, like all people, had very real concerns and the "rights" they sought to protect meant something more than an abstract principle.