Golly, I really don't want to hash this out yet again.
But Davis and Rhett and Wigfall and Toombs and Benjamin and Lee weren't a bunch of good ol' boys who sat around in a garage drinking beer and cleaning their guns when the ATF came after them.
They were as much of an oligarchy as any other government on these shores -- probably more than other governments we've had.
Oligarchy? Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet were in Army service, in Texas and New Mexico respectively. Toombs was out of office. Wigfall I don't know about, but Rhett was a newspaper editor. Some "garchy".
No, the real oligarchs were the tidewater and Delta planters with their big white houses and battalions of slaves -- and they had created, and voted for, the Constitutional Union ticket behind Bell, who was Breckinridge's only real competition in the South, but was beaten decisively.
The oligarchs were for Union, as were the old Jacksonians up in the mountain hollows.