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I think that it is clear that the South had a right to secede, simply because there was no consitutional prohibition of same. But it is also clear that there was a moral imperative to end slavery in which the North had also been complicit to some degree. Nevertheless, it is clear from reading about the lives of many southern military leaders, including Lee, that they did not like slavery but were also unwilling to fight against their native states. We today in the US have a far greater sense of federal unity than citizens living in either the North or South in 1860 did.

"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."
-Abraham Lincoln