Good post BroJoeK. I had assembled some notes in preparation to responding to DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis’s post but you knocked it out of the park.
In researching Kenner’s deal I refreshed a connection that I had uncovered before but not made note of - it really does appear to be Kenner’s deal and not davis’s. That comports with what I have read of davis, who wasn’t a staunch slaver, but rather seemed to fit in that ambiguous “hate it but I still use it” case. As the record shows, he was adamantly opposed to budging on abolition, or even blacks volunteering for service until he found himself with his back against the wall. His decision was borne of reluctant pragmatism, not idealism.
There was no abolition movement to speak of in the south. Point in fact, it was illegal to speak of abolition and a good way to find yourself and your property firebombed. The southern leadership had proven itself unshaken in it’s belief that the Peculiar Institution would also be the Perpetual Institution.
Agreed, I should have mentioned that, and listed some details to illustrate the point.
But the map by county of 1860 election results shows pro-Constitutional-Union voters in every Southern state which could vote, enough votes to carry Virginia, Kentucky & Tennessee, and to make the idea of Unionism a clear national movement in 1860.
In the early 1800s there were more abolitionist societies in the South than in the North. That was before abolition became a dirty word with the coming of the northern vitriolic abolitionists.