I started to read Volume 1 of Jefferson Davis' book to see if he provides a more balanced view of the Confederation and the American Civil War. It looks like he is a good orator and he frequently goes into long diatribes which are somewhat difficult to follow. I was struck by the fact that the book is really a startling text of demagoguery with the main intent to show that "the Southern states were not necessarily advocating slavery, they were supporting the states' individual rights to follow their own policy without intervention from the Central Government". You do not find a single word in the book that is remotely hinting that slavery was a reviled practice and it was bad. No, he's just trying to prove that the Confederate states would eventually abolish slavery, but the Central Government had no right to intervene on any citizen moving their property (aka slaves) to any part of the United States. I think if he had lived through the horrors of the 20th Century, he would have paid more attention to universal Human Rights and would not blindly follow a cause because it seemed to follow the grand idea that states doing whatever they wanted amounted to real democracy.

Accepting the certainty that American history was re-written by the winning Northern historians, it is clear that the South did not really have a defendable position. Just following something because it seems to be "legal" does not make it right. We have lived through a 20th Century where an elected leader tried to annihilate a complete people just because he seemingly had the power to do so, based on the laws he had changed.