Your problem is that many — indeed the vast majority — did believe their own propaganda because, to them, it was true: “Ape” Lincoln and his “Black Republicans” threatened slavery enough to make secession “necessary”.
The fact that Lincoln did not really threaten slavery makes secessionist propaganda a Big Lie which converts the “necessity” into pure, unadulterated at pleasure secession.
It’s an important point in making the Confederacy illegitimate from Day One.
Firstly there is no way of knowing whether the majority were motivated by protection of slavery....doubtful since a large majority did not own any....or by the feeling that they were being consistently taken advantage of and bilked out of a lot of money every year. That I find more likely because the economics would have been felt by everybody in the South whether they owned any slaves or not.
Of course whenever there is a bitter longstanding dispute like this, people’s feelings of antipathy toward their opponents takes over and there’s no doubt many in the South simply wanted to no longer have to put up with New Englanders....I can’t say I blame them.
We agree that slavery was not threatened in the US. That said, the Northern states did go out of their way to avoid enforcing the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution and thus did break one of the terms of the deal they made with the Southern states when the Constitution was ratified. They thus provided a legitimate legal basis for the Southern states to say the Northern states had violated the compact.
Unilateral secession is the right of each state and this was entirely in keeping with the original intent of the States when they ratified the constitution.
Oh, but they did, in Deep South states like South Carolina and Mississippi, which were #1 and #2 to secede, and they clearly said in their Reasons for Secession documents that protecting slavery was not just their biggest reason, but their only real reason.
In those two states nearly 50% of families owned slaves meaning that virtually everybody was close family & friends to slave-holders and therefore very concerned about their interests.
FLT-bird: "or by the feeling that they were being consistently taken advantage of and bilked out of a lot of money every year.
That I find more likely because the economics would have been felt by everybody in the South whether they owned any slaves or not."
Claims that they were being somehow "bilked" are simply false, and hard to argue when Deep South planters and their white neighbors were then, on average, the most prosperous people ever on Earth.
FLT-bird: "That said, the Northern states did go out of their way to avoid enforcing the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution and thus did break one of the terms of the deal they made with the Southern states when the Constitution was ratified. "
Possibly, in some cases, but remember the Compromise of 1850 made the Federal government, not Northern states, responsible for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws.
Furthermore, the deeper South you traveled, the less of a "problem" were fugitive slaves, such that those who seemed to complain most about it had virtually zero "problem" with it.
FLT-bird: "Unilateral secession is the right of each state and this was entirely in keeping with the original intent of the States when they ratified the constitution."
Utterly false, a lie from the time first uttered and not made any more true with its constant repetition.
In fact, our Founders recognized only true necessity (as in 1776) and mutual consent (as in 1788) as legitimate reasons for disunion.
Neither condition existed in late 1860 & early 1861.
No Founder ever supported unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, meaning in the absence of absolute necessity.
And yet that's just what Confederates began to do in late 1860.