The ordinances of secession were the actual legal language by which the seceded states severed their connection with the Federal Union. The declarations of causes, given elsewhere on this Web site, are where they tended to disclose their reasons for doing so, although only four states issued separate declarations of causes.
The political theory of the time among secessionists required that the act of secession be carried out by a specially elected convention or by referendum. In this sense the "secessions" of both Missouri and Kentucky were flawed, as neither was carried out in this manner. The Missouri secession ordinance was passed by a rump legislature and never approved by the people at large. The Kentucky secession ordinance was adopted by a convention of 200 participants representing 65 counties, held in Russellville.
These are offered in chronological order. If the state convention passed a declaration of causes document, then the header for that ordinance provides a link back to that document.
* South Carolina * Mississippi * Florida * Alabama * Georgia * Louisiana * Texas * Virginia * Arkansas * North Carolina * Tennessee * Missouri * Kentucky
http://americancivilwar.com/documents/causes_south_carolina.html
http://americancivilwar.com/documents/causes_mississippi.html
http://americancivilwar.com/documents/causes_georgia.html
http://americancivilwar.com/documents/causes_texas.html
Remember the Whitewater scandal? I got to digging into things and discovered that the Jayhawk War had already been played out before the Kansas/Nebraska problem, and Marion County in the far North along the Missouri state line had a countyseat named Yellville, exactly the same as Marion County, Indiana (before Indianapolis was founded). The area was settled by people from Indiana interested in keeping slavery out of what would otherwise be an integral part of the Bean Belt!
The pattern was repeated all over the state with various settlements made as part of political colonization activity by people in pro- or anti-slavery states or regions in the Eastern United States.
Only if it was possible to get the desired outcome that way. In Tennessee the pro-slavery gang couldn't get the voters to approve a secession convention, so the Democratic cheats in the legislature went ahead and took the state out of the Union themselves and invited the Confederate army to invade the state. It took Tennessee three years and the help of the Union army to repel the invaders.
In retrospect, it was a bad decision on Virginia's part. Not only did a lot of destruction occur during the war, but if Virginia had stayed in the Union, West Virginia would not have become a state, and Robert Byrd would not be a US senator.
Plus the burning of Richmond destroyed a lot of records needed for Virginia genealogy.