I am afraid your private assurances would not have completely resolved the issues.
Nor do they now.
jeffersondem: "I am afraid your private assurances would not have completely resolved the issues."
The fact is that Southerners had nothing to fear after the 1856 election, when Democrats united to defeat the "Black Republican" threat and then won, as a bonus, the SCOTUS Dred Scott ruling, only one step away from declaring abolition unconstitutional.
So Fire Eaters "fixed that" in 1860, split apart their national Democrat party thus engineering victory by the minority Republicans.
Why did Southern Democrats split from their Northern Democrat brethren?
Was it over "money flows from Europe" or "Northeastern power brokers" or Northerners "raping" the South economically or "confiscatory tariffs"??
Naw, it was none of that because not one Southerner in a thousand understood or cared about such things.
But all leading Southerners did understand and care about the threats to slavery from "Black Republicans" and even their own Northern Democrat allies, such as Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas.
For the vast majority it was "all about" slavery, and everything else was a specialized boutique side issue.