It's Confederate History Month in Dixie

[PanzerJaeger]

So the South fought to protect the rights of a small elite to continue slavery thats hardly noble in fact it makes it worse cause most the people never owned a slave and they still ended up killed.

No, they fought to maintain the sovereignty of the states, a principle on which the nation was founded. More directly, they fought for their families, their brothers in arms, and their way of life.

However, checking the wiki article (which has been immensely expanded since the last time I read it) it seems the confederate constitution made a ton of changes to weaken the power of the federal government. The perils of using wiki as a source...

This is what I remember as being accurate. "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character..."

Further, I don't believe the Southern states had so much of a problem with the Constitution itself, but with how the government had been drifting away from the founding principles expressed in that document. They believed themselves to be - and I think quite accurately - patriots, returning the balance of power to the states as was originally envisioned by the founders.