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DiogenesLamp: "Your continuous usage of the term "fire eaters" is a deliberate attempt to derogate and dismiss their concerns as unworthy of consideration."

That term, "Fire Eaters" is just one of many used by people at the time to refer to themselves and others.

Fire Eaters were radical Southern secessionists from the 1840s through 1861.
Notable Fire Eaters included: Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, John A. Quitman, Thomas C. Hindman, William Porcher Miles, Laurence M. Keitt, James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow (publisher of DeBow's Review), Robert Rhett, Louis Wigfall, William Barksdale, Edmund Ruffin.
Dough-faced Northerners = Northern Democrat allies of Southern slave-power Democrats and to Northern pro-slavery Whigs.
Dough-faces could be counted on to vote pro-slavery in Congress.
Copperheads = Northerner Democrats who supported the Confederacy.
Wide-Awakes = Northern Republicans, organized in semi-military units.
Democrat Party equivalents = Douglas Invincibles, Young Hickories, Earthquakes, and even Chloroformers (in reference to the "Wide Awakes").
Minute Men = Southern equivalents of Wide Awakes.
Slave Power = additional Democrat Congressmen elected due to the Constitution's 3/5 slave rule.
Slavocracy = the South's antebellum ruling elite.
Know-nothings = anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic party especially strong in Border South states.
Black Republicans = Republicans generally, abolitionists specifically.

Those are all I can think of off the top of my head, but there were doubtless others.
They are all historical terms, used at the time by both the people themselves sometimes, and more often by their political enemies.

Don't get me started on the Hunkers, the Barnburners, and the Locofocos.

So you are telling me that you do not use the term because you intend it to be derogatory? I think this is a lot like the “N-Word” where people can call themselves that, yet it takes on entirely different connotations when done by others.