Final answer:
Jefferson Davis justified secession based on the legal right to protect liberties and the principle of states' rights, including the right to own slaves, bolstered by concepts of white supremacy. He distinguished secession from revolution by stating that secession was a legal withdrawal based on states' rights, not an attempt to overthrow the government.
Step-by-step explanation:
Jefferson Davis justified the separation from the American Union on the grounds that the Southern states had the legal right to secede, as they sought to protect the liberty their ancestors had fought for during the Revolution. The belief was that states had the right to control their own affairs, especially around the issue of property rights, which in this context included the right to own slaves. The notion of white supremacy also played a role in garnering support from non-slaveholders for secession.
Davis rejected the notion that the Southern Confederacy represented a revolution because in his view, the Confederacy was simply exercising its legal right to secede rather than attempting to overthrow the existing government. The difference between revolution and secession is that the former involves a comprehensive and often violent effort to change the government system, while the latter is a formal withdrawal from an established political entity without necessarily seeking to alter its governmental structure.