Most had made up their mind following the election in November of 1860 and in the months before Lincoln's inauguration. Despite the fact that Lincoln had repeatedly stated prior to the election that he had no intention of abolishing slavery where it then existed, they simply didn't believe it and weren't going to wait around to see if it was true. As they saw it, only by forming their own completely slaveholding nation could they avoid the kind of endless debating over the issue that had dominated Congress in the previous decades. As the initial response to Lincoln's proposal for gradual compensated emancipation by the loyal slave states, who had a much smaller stake in the institution than the deep south, indicates, slavery was deeply ingrained and wasn't going to be abandoned easily.