The short boigraphy you posted is really interesting and well written too. I'll have to find his book. Thank you very much for the whole post.
The problem I have, and have always had with the notion that the final issue before the CSA congress was really about resistance to a "central government" or about "states rights" or about "property rights" is that the CSA congress approved that people of the CSA were to be forced by the draft to surrender to the central government themselves, their sons, their husbands, and the people did so. The states were ordered by the CSA congress under threat of force to surrender their state militias to central government, and the states did so. There is no way this was some principled stand by the CSA congress to not bow to central authority. They WERE the central authority!
The CSA congress's resistance to Lee's request was not purely about "property rights" either because the CSA congress had no qualms about arranging provisions by law for any other type of property to be surrendered to the military by some means or another, with adequate compensation to the owner of course. Only one type of property was exempt. Even with a free-will donation, by this law only 20% of the slaves in any state would be accepted.
Is there anywhere in the laws of the CSA that says only 20% of a family's sons could be drafted? Anywhere where it says only 20% of a state's horses could be surrendered for military use? Personal liberty and property rights of other types were forced to surrender to "central government".
Oates spells out clearly was was needed, and that it was refused. Any one who believes that the "facts" show that the law passed in 1865 by the CSA congress, which only allowed for donated slaves to serve in the military as armed soldiers, also provided for the emancipation of those slaves, has their "facts" wrong.