The South claimed that the cause of the War was for States Rights. From their perspective, was States Rights only about owning slaves?

Chase and I were discussing in the thread below, would the War for Southern Independence have been fought if Slavery had not been involved?

My position is that yes it would have. My reasoning is that the States Right issue of the south embodied far greater legal principal that just the ownership of slaves.

That under Article 4, of the 1860's US Constitution the regulation of slavery was totally the province of the States. That the issue was to be decided on a State by State basis either to be allowed or be abolished. This was the Jeffersonian theory of Government, that power was most correctly placed at the lower level of Government.

And that the interference of the Federal Government into what was considered a "State matter". And it was a Constitutional issue and not a racial issue. That the regulation of Slavery by the Federal Government was the Hamiltonian Theory of Government, Basically the "Big Brother, Nanny State" that the federal government had the right to dictate the proper conduct of the people.