No offence...

I did, are you happy now?

You: "It was only a part of their way of life, a part that would have ended."

Me: "What you specifically fail to realize is just how integral the institution of slavery was to Southern socioeconomics, and how the subjugation of blacks was not simply an economic policy but a societal necessity. The Confederacy, the culmination of the seceding states' effort at housing their society in a new government, is simply inextricable and inseparable from that subjugation. [...] the moral, economic, and social foundation of the Confederacy was the aforementioned subjugation of blacks. [...] States' rights were merely a justification of their continuation of that way of life."

You: "What you specifically fail to realize is just how integral the institution of slavery was to Southern socioeconomics, and how the subjugation of blacks was not simply an economic policy but a societal necessity. The Confederacy, the culmination of the seceding states' effort at housing their society in a new government, is simply inextricable and inseparable from that subjugation. [...] the moral, economic, and social foundation of the Confederacy was the aforementioned subjugation of blacks. [...] States' rights were merely a justification of their continuation of that way of life."

Me: "It was at the time needed, however needs changed. The South seemed just fine without the slaves. The problem is what Abe Lincoln did the South; that caused the real problem for the South.

If slavery was such a big part of Southern life than how come that only about 10% of Confederates owned slaves?"

Uh, because there were very few big plantation owners. Here's a quick summary of the Southern economy, and the relevant part: "Because large slaveholders owned most of the region’s slaves, wealth was more stratified than in the North. In the Deep South, the middle class held a relatively small proportion of the region’s property, while wealthy planters owned a very significant portion of the productive lands and slave labor. In 1850, 17 percent of the farming population held two-thirds of all acres in the rich cotton-growing regions of the South."

Nebby has addressed the 10% figure, so:

"The South seemed just fine without the slaves."

Yes, after decades of Reconstruction. The transition from a plantation-, agriculture-based economy did not happen overnight, and it never fully took place. Furthermore, even after slavery itself was eliminated, the status of blacks (and of course black plantation workers) did not change very much; blacks were very much still an underclass in the South, especially after the Union troops left in 1877 - this culminated in Jim Crow. Put simply, the South did fine after Reconstruction without the "slaves", but still relied upon blacks as an underclass.

"The problem is what Abe Lincoln did the South; that caused the real problem for the South."

Are you talking about stuff like wp:Sherman's March to the Sea? Reconstruction? You haven't described what this "problem" was.

Blue has answered this very, very well. I was going to say things along similar lines, but I'll cut it down to this:

You're right, the Union was racist, the CSA was racist. But we shouldn't judge historical characters by our standards, but their contemporary standards. What would now be considered homophobic would be considered perfectly normal. Would we say the Founding Fathers were homophobes? No.

But, in the context of that period, there can still be such a thing as a racist state. If a state if FORMED on the principle that one race can own another, when slavery has been illegal in Great Britain and the Northern United States for decades, and they're clinging onto their 'negroes,' then they are racist by contemporary standards.

I simply don't think the statement, "The CSA wasn't (mainly) racist," is a sensible one. Going back so far, when racism wasn't neccecarily viewed as a 'bad thing,' it still means something, and the CSA was the embodiment of that.