The "economic question" is just slavery with extra steps though. Designing your economy around the institution of slavery doesn't mean the slavery is somehow more okay, and white southerners were not reluctantly owning black people as property because it was the only way to survive. They could survive without slavery, and they very much wanted black people to be placed far beneath white people for a long time after slavery was abolished. Even poor white people who couldn't afford to actually own slaves still very much wanted black people to be kept in their place.

I also have little sympathy for states feeling like nobody is listening to them when their number one issue is their right to own slaves. If some state today was frustrated because the rest of the union just didn't understand their reasons for widely practicing pedophilia, then I don't think many of us would be too keen to take their side either.

Thinking that quite literally owning humans on a legal manner was somehow a good idea will definitely go down as one of humanity's worst ideas ever.