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You are right about the frustrations that fire-eaters, like Rhett and Yancey felt at not being given real power in the Confederacy. I was talking more about the influence that they had in the months leading up to secession. Not every Southerner was reluctant and melancholy about leaving the union. Some, including leaders, were positively enthusiastic, and without them, history might have been different.

It was not just foreign countries that needed to be convinced by selecting more moderate leaders: there was also the Upper South, the Border States, Northern Democrats and conservatives and those in the CSA who weren't in favor of secession. I don't know how radical or moderate the convention or Congress that selected Davis was. It does tend to happen in revolutions that the most radical agitators who make the revolution are passed over when heads of government are chosen. It may be that cooler heads prevailed at Montgomery. Then again, it may be that pragmatic grounds motivated even some of the more passionate and enthusiastic secessionists to choose someone who was perceived as being more moderate.

It looks like Stephens, an old Whig, did oppose secession, but here we have Jefferson Davis's November 10, 1860 letter to Robert Toombs, written a few days after the election. Davis urges on purely practical grounds that the cotton states coordinate their actions, so that no state secede too early before it was clear that others would support it. Some arguments for caution and deliberation in late 1860 may just have been delaying tactics until Southern political leaders got all their ducks in a row, not indications of indecision, deep reflection or emotional torment. Doubtless, Davis felt regrets on leaving the Union, but he was also able to think quite cooly about what he and his state were doing.

[labard1]

You're correct in observing that the Montgomery convention was much more interested in the Upper South, Border States and Northern Democrats than Europe. (It also wanted good government for itself, of course.) By the way, if you're interested in the Montgomery convention, the best treatment I've found is William C. Davis, A Government of Our Own (subtitled, The Making of the Confederacy), The Free Press 1994, which despite its (uninformative) title is mainly about the Montgomery convention.

You're also right that Stephens' opposition to secession was much deeper and stronger than Davis'. Once Lincoln had been elected, Davis knew opposition no longer mattered in Mississippi (ie., he could not have stopped it if he had tried, and he would only have been throwing away his own political career to try).