Why did Southerners want to secede?

Even though slavery was core to the issue which brought about the Civil War, states rights was what surrounded it.

Even before he was elected president, Lincoln made it known he was anti-slavery. When Lincoln was elected, South Carolina was the first state to leave the union, December 20, 1860. Other states followed until war was declared in April 1861.

But the issue was as much about what a state had the right to do within its borders as about anything else. Even in the north, women did not have nearly the rights or say that men did. The southern states claim that slaves were property not protected under the Constitution was their stand. The considered slavery as a part of each individual state's commerce and that the Federal Government had no right to regulate that. In truth, at the point in time the Federal Government had no laws regarding commerce except where money was concern, meaning, who printed or minted the money.

But Abolitionists argued that the South had demanded, and gotten, the right to count slaves as #3/5# a person. Clearly both options could not prevail and so the war was started.