To make the point, perhaps you can locate a statement on this topic by Breckinridge from the election campaign. If people heard Breckinridge speaking in favor of secession during the presidential election campaign of 1860, what would they have thought?

Looking ahead to the secession conventions, you have better ground on which to base your argument. Many larger slaveholders (twenty or more slaves) opposed secession, and some were unconditional Unionists. It would be more reasonable to say that planters thought different ways on secession. Some believed that the Union and the Consitution were bulkwarks against abolitionist encroachments. Others recognized the quickly rising power of the Republican Party and felt that the ambitions of a slave-holding empire, to include Cuba and Central American states, could only be realized in a Southern Confederacy.

It was a judgement call, and planters broke both ways on secession. For many it was a reluctant choice.

From the standpoint of the typical Southerner who did not belong to a slave-owning family, roughly sixty percent overall, most could foresee the unmitigated disaster which would befall them should emancipation come.