I've seen at most one episode of Firefly (I can't quite remember), so this may not be relevant at all, but liberal opinion in Europe in the 1860s was pretty much entirely on the side of the south. The Civil War was perceived as being entirely about state's rights vs the union, not slavery (to be fair, even Lincoln thought in these terms). IIRC, Gladstone even contemplated taking Britain to war on the side of the south, although there were other big political factors influencing this.

So, what I'm saying is, this may not be a pleasant attitude (and parrot_knight is right that it says as much about the authors of the essays as anything else), but it isn't an unprecedented one.