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But regardless of the overall average, what matters is that in regions with fewer slaveholders, voters rejected secession on both February 9 and June 8 while the opposite is true in regions with higher percentages of slaveholders. That should be "case closed" on whether slavery was a determining factor in Tennessee's votes on secession.

Why should it? In the regions that had more slave owners, most of the votes for secession in both referenda were from Non Slave Owners. Any other outcome is mathematically impossible.

Julia Dent Grant's father, Frederick, owned a 30-slave plantation of 850 acres just west of St. Louis, Missouri. Dent did not grow export-oriented crops like cotton, tobacco or rice, instead he grew wheat, corn, potatoes and other produce for sale in St. Louis produce markets. St. Louis was the locus of Missouri Unionism so Dent, like other slaveholding Unionists recognized his own best interests lay with the Union. Pro-Union slaveholders like Frederick Dent were a small minority, ~10%, among slaveholders, even in Union slave-states like Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware. Such men were rare to non-existent in the Deep Cotton South and export-cotton growing regions of Upper South states like Tennessee.

You are claiming that without any evidence. There were plenty of slave owning unionists in border states. For all we know there were more than a few in the states of the Upper and Deep South as well.

We can see this in such high slavery counties as Marshall and Giles, Tennessee, where ~70% voted for secession on February 9 and nearly 100% on June 8, 1861.

In both of these counties a majority of non slave owners had to have voted for secession in both referenda.

Here is a good source. Here is another. And here is a third. What these show is that: Census‑based analyses and county‑level slave schedules indicate that in rural cotton‑producing counties of Middle Tennessee, slaveholding was overwhelmingly concentrated among white male household heads, with women comprising only a very small minority of recorded slaveholders—typically widows or estate representatives. This contrasts sharply with major slave‑market cities such as New Orleans and Charleston, where women constituted roughly 30–40 percent of documented slave owners. From this, I put women slaveholder in rural plantation counties like Giles & Marshall, TN, as in the range of 5% rather than the up to 40% in large port cities like New Orleans or Charleston.

The First link said 10%. The 2nd was not very informative. The third link showed Women involved as buyers and sellers at a rate of between 23% and 40%. I don't see anywhere where 5% would be the expected ratio for women.

That is correct, but we can easily see that the higher percentage of slaveholders, the higher the percentage voting for secession -- on both February 9 and June 8, 1861. Regions with low % slaveholders voted against secession both times, while those with high % slaveholders (like Giles & Marshall) voted for secession both times.

True, but that's only a general observation and does not allow anybody to say with any degree of confidence that all slave owners voted for secession. What's clear is that in the states of the Upper South, the overwhelming majority rejected secession at first but changed their minds once a war to prevent it had begun. It seems to me that was by far the biggest issue to them.

That was the opinion of Grant's father-in-law, Frederick Dent of St. Louis, Missouri. But Dent's views were a small (~10%) minority even among Border State slaveholders and were almost unknown in the Deep Cotton South in 1861.

It was only a small minority who believed that slavery was safer in the union than outside of it? Again, I don't know where you would find any data to support that claim. We do know that Lincoln publicly said that and that several others had expressed the same thought publicly for years as well. We have no idea how many believed it or did not.

In fact, the only name you cited was Alexander Johnson from the 1880s, and for him there is no proof he actually said that, since no surviving work of Johnson's repeats the 38,000 number -- look that up if you don't believe me. The truth is, no recognized historian has put a total number on either Union or Confederate "illegal arrests", and only one, Mark Neely, has taken the time to actually count all the actual records available for what Neely calls "arbitrary arrests" (not "illegal arrests"). Neely does not claim his numbers (~14,400 Union, ~4,000 Confederate) are the actual totals, only that they are the totals of surviving records.

The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865: This primary source of that year stated that the total number of military arrests in the North during the war was thirty-eight thousand, a statistic later referenced in the Columbia Law Review (1921).

There are other sources including American Bastille (1869) which covered the topic.

FLT-bird: "Why should it?
In the regions that had more slave owners, most of the votes for secession in both referenda were from Non Slave Owners.
Any other outcome is mathematically impossible."

Yes, but this is also a mathematical fact, deny it all you want: regions with high %s of slaveholders, such as Giles & Marshall counties, voted overwhelmingly (70%+ & 90%+) for secession on both February 9 and June 8, 1861.
Conversely, regions with low to no slaveholders voted against secession both times, in East Tennessee's case by 4 to 1 on February 9 and still 2 to 1 on June 8, 1861.

There is no rational argument which says that difference had to do with anything other than the dominant slave culture of West and South Central Tennessee.

FLT-bird: "You are claiming that without any evidence.
There were plenty of slave owning unionists in border states.
For all we know there were more than a few in the states of the Upper and Deep South as well."

I researched it further.
Turns out that Unionist Border State slaveholders like Grant's father-in-law, Frederick Dent in St. Louis, were the majority of slaveholders there, at least until actual shooting began in 1861, and even then, even in Missouri's Little Dixie, a good many slaveholders, like Dent, saw their future in the Union rather than in a rebel Confederacy.

In the Upper & Lower South the situation was very different, but I was still able to get my AI assistant to confess the Lost Cause mantra:

"Slaveholding status alone did not determine secession allegiance, even after Fort Sumter."

When I challenged AI on this, it quickly reverted to saying the overwhelming correlation between slaveholding and pro-secession votes could not be just "coincidence":

"Historians are very explicit on this point.
The Upper South’s late secession was not random, not cultural coincidence, and not abstract “states’ rights” sentiment.
It tracked slave density almost mechanically.
So you’re right: this cannot be waved away."

Bottom line: Yes, even on June 8, 1861 there were documented slaveholding Unionists in East, Central and West Tennessee.
However, they were a tiny minority of the significant numbers of slaveholders who had voted against secession on February 9.

FLT-bird: "In both of these counties a majority of non slave owners had to have voted for secession in both referenda."

True enough, but the Marshall County percentage of voters owning slaves -- ~29% -- was high enough that nearly everyone who did not own slaves was related to, or neighbors of, and shared common interests with the dominant slave culture.

By stark contrast, in regions with few to no slaves, the entire culture and outlook was different -- they were anti-secession, anti-Confederacy and anti-war against the United States.

Those are facts.

FLT-bird: "The First link said 10%.
The 2nd was not very informative.
The third link showed Women involved as buyers and sellers at a rate of between 23% and 40%.
I don't see anywhere where 5% would be the expected ratio for women."

The first link says:

"The findings indicate that 90 percent of the enslaved population were reportedly held by free males."

The 10% who were not "free male slaveholders" (and so were ineligible to vote) is an overall number which includes big cities where slave ownership could soar to nearly 40% women slaveholders.
This means, in rural plantation counties like Giles & Marshall, TN, in 1860, the rate of women slaveholders must have been much less than 10%.
Further, not all non-voting slaveholders were women, some were children and a few were even freed-blacks.
That's why 5% of slaveholders being women in rural Giles & Marshall is more reasonable than 10%.

FLT-bird: "What's clear is that in the states of the Upper South, the overwhelming majority rejected secession at first but changed their minds once a war to prevent it had begun.
It seems to me that was by far the biggest issue to them."

Sure, overall, you're right.
But, yet again, if you look at Tennessee by region -- West, Middle and East -- you see that very high-slavery % West Tennessee voted overwhelmingly for secession both times, February 9 and June 8, while very low-slavery % East Tennessee voted overwhelmingly against secession both times.
High slavery % South Central TN (including Giles & Marshall) voted with West Tennessee both times overwhelmingly for secession.

North Central TN (i.e., Nashville), flipped from anti-secession of February 9 to solidly pro-secession on June 8, and that is what drove TN totals to ~70% pro-secession on June 8.

FLT-bird: "The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865: This primary source of that year stated that the total number of military arrests in the North during the war was thirty-eight thousand, a statistic later referenced in the Columbia Law Review (1921).
There are other sources including American Bastille (1869) which covered the topic."

Here's your problem with all of those sources:

The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865 is nowhere quoted fully and in context, nor is there information on the source and definitions behind the number "38,000" -- IOW, that 38,000 could represent almost anything, not necessarily "illegal arrests".
Mark Neely himself cites the 38,000 as an example of very poor scholarship, having no source or definition data behind it, other than, according to Neely, Cyclopedia said 38,000 were “denied the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus”
Nothing in the Columbia Law Review (1921) has been found to confirm the 38,000 "illegal arrests" number, or anything similar.
IOW, there is no confirmed citing of the Columbia Law Review (1921) as claiming "38,000 illegal arrests".
There is no surviving work from Alexander Johnson which claims "38,000 illegal arrests", and no evidence he ever studied or counted the historical records.
John Marshall's American Bastille (1869) is anti-Lincoln polemics, not true scholarship.
Marshall's claims of 5,000 to 10,000 "illegal arrests" came out of thin air, not from any serious research.
16 years later (1885), Marshall doubled his numbers but again without defining what they meant or doing any actual research.
IOW, Marshall's numbers are strictly pulled out of thin air.
Only Neely has ever made the efforts to actually define and count the numbers of records on what he calls "arbitrary arrests" (not "illegal arrests").
Those paint a very different picture of who, where and why people got arrested, than what we see from pro-Confederate propagandists like John Marshall or your Abbeville Institute.