We hear a lot that from the Southern point of view their main reason for secession was to preserve what they saw as their rights from federal encroachment. I'm curious how well that translated into their government during their brief existence. Was it every state for itself or did they attempt to put in place the same sort of centralized controls that they believed they were fighting against?
If we look at the Confederate Constitution it is almost exactly the same as the U.S. Constitution. They didn't change it that much. There is very little that is different, for example the President serves only one 6 year term and gives the president a line-item veto Art.1 Sec. 7 Cl. 2, but other than that there isn't much difference. In some sections its almost word for word. Another noticeable difference is that of proposing amendments. In the Confederate Constitution upon the demand of 3 states the Confederate Congress can call a convention to ratify amendments. In the U.S. Constitution you can either have 2/3rds of the House and Senate or 2/3s of the States. But in reality the Confederate Constitution did not grant exceptionally more power to the states than the U.S. Now there are explicit provisions within the Confed. Const. that vigorously protect the institution of slavery. For example look at Art. IV Sec. 2 Cl. 3 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp, which by the way isn't much different from Art. IV Sec. 3 of the U.S. const. but the states had just as much power in the Confederacy as the Union.