Did the Confederates see themselves as traitors? After all they were fighting AGAINST the union to preserve slavery. How was that PATRIOTIC?

In approaching this question, I first take into account that many, such as yourself, have no understanding of the region, its people or its history. Hindsight gives all of us a  way of passing judgement in more simplistic terms without considering that these were complex people (as we are) living in extraordinary times and circumstances. What began as a war to restore the Union, became a war to abolish slavery with the political agitation of Northern newspapers and abolitionists. Slavery was indeed at the center of an economic and political power struggle that dated back to the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was all a work in progress for decades. Chattel slavery had been on North American soil since the 1600's and was an established institution protected by US law and courts. I don't raise that as a defense of enforced bondage, only to point out that there was more to the controversies of that time than just being for or against the "peculiar" institution of slavery. When hostilities broke out, many outside of the plantation aristocracy saw the struggle as a defense of property, home, family and basic rights. The firebrands of secession had something in common with Northern extremists and that was more passion and fire than sense and reason. Did southerners who mobilized and fought think of themselves as traitors? Part of the answer is found in the "Great Seal of the Confederacy" that featured an equestrian image of George Washington with the motto "Deo Vindice" or God justifies. The struggle was seen as a reaffirmation of the American Revolution and the Constitution. With that as a consideration, one can only conclude that these people saw themselves as Americans and Patriots. And what of those Northerners that went south and the southerners who went north to act as their own convictions led them? What of the non slave holding families that were willing to sacrifice or die? What of those who saw the war as an adventure until the horrors caught up with them, yet they continued to hold out even after the institution of slavery was effectively dead? I find a lot of answers in my own Scots-Irish ancestry. These were people who were noted for their fierce independence and willingness to fight over principles right or wrong. My own family was divided during those days. Some were slave holders and some were not. Getting killed in the fighting was what they shared in common. It matters not to me how the modern sensibilities judge those days. I'm as proud of those in the family who took up the Confederate cause as I am of those who have defended this nation for the last 150 years. Nations are imperfect because men are imperfect. To honor courage is appropriate and honorable. At least it is with this Scots-Irish southerner.

Remember that until post-Civil War ... there was no "Union".  That was a total fabrication of President Lincoln.
They were sovereign states, in a voluntary federation.
If you can volunteer into a relationship, you should be able to voluntarily leave it as well.
  (this agrees with court rulings that we have a "Freedom of Association", btw)

Another fabrication of President Lincoln, is that the war was about slavery.
Though morally opposed to slavery, Lincoln didn't give a damn about it, when it came to keeping "the Union" together. 
He even said as much in his letter to Horace Greeley (08-22-1862):

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.


So why the Emancipation Proclamation?
Because the European Powers were threatening to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy, and saying the war was about slavery was the only way to prevent them from doing so.