> Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves

Something I learned at The Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston [1] is that Southern slaveowners were almost all terifically leveraged. Slaves were purchased predominantly with borrowed money (from, I might add, the North). And slaves were expensive, making up a significant if not dominating fraction of estates' assets.

For Southern elites, therefore, abolition was an existential question. It meant bankruptcy and poverty, with insult added to injury in their creditors being Northerners. To my knowledge (and I'm no expert in this) the question of abolition paired with debt forgiveness was never seriously discussed by the Union.

So yes, Confederate racism absolutely condemns its common folk. But even a moderately well-read Southern commoner would understand that abolition meant financial crisis, taking out their communities' largest tax payers, donors, consumers and employers in one swoop.

I didn't walk away from the Museum sympathetic to slavery. But I did become more sympathetic to the South; in particular, to their bewildering decisions to continue prosecuting a war they were so very obviously, from a history textbook's perspective, losing. (To be clear, slavery is wrong. The South seceding was stupid. Not suing for peace after Gettysburg and Vicksburg stupider still.)

[1] https://theoldslavemartmuseum.org