The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern, revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves.
https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of...
Question #1: Name three states rights the South supposedly aruged for.
Question #2: Count how many of those rights they actually granted to their own states.
For it being supposedly such a major factor in their succession, states rights are conspicuously silent in both the ordinances of succession, contemporary oratory, and in the text they wrote in their own Constitution.
Slavery was the tipping point but the conflict goes much deeper than that.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
States rights... to own slaves.
The election of Lincoln and John Browns raid were threatening to the south exactly because of their threat to slavery. The south was not only paranoid of a slave uprising, but also owned people was the bulk of their wealth.
I think this skeptics SE is pretty good summary:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slave...
And the Cornerstone Speech by the VP of the confederacy:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
The historical record written in the confederacy's own words disagrees with you.
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States shows slavery up front and center. These Declarations from five states, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia include the word "slave" 83 times. (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...)
Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
Georgia: "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery...The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by [the northern Union's] leaders and applauded by its followers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of [the northern Union]. For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, ..."
South Carolina: "A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery."
Texas: "[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race ..."
The Confederate states certainly didn't respect the right of the Northern states to terminate slavery, and indeed forced through a number of laws (prior to the Civil war) requiring the Northern states to participate in the return of escaped slaves.