Goldsmith certainly seemed be coming from a position in which he viewed the US government as a tyrannical oppressor whose power had been entrenched by the defeat of the South.

But this seems to be a reading in which Americans would be freer, better-off and happier had the South won which may be the case if you are white, but something like a third of the population of the South, at the time of the Civil War were slaves and I don't see that this libertarian ideal would have done much for them.