In each, delegates were chosen, and the conventions resulted in their being signatories to formal secession documents.
which, of course, were not recognized by the entity to which they were constitutional signatories in the first place, thus, they were not a ‘distinct nation’except in their own delusions, regardless of articles of secession not worth the paper they were written on...
And there you have the perfect example of a tyrannical federal government. Pretty much from that point forward, the government has increasingly restricted freedom of the states and of individuals in its never-ending quest for more power and control.