You ask interesting questions about Fannin County TX in 1860. A review published census statistics for that year would help. For example, how many families owned slaved in Fannin County? How many schools, newspapers and churches were reported? This fact wouldn't be on the published census, but we know that a large masonic lodge was founded there in 1853 --
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txfannin/masonicbethel.html

We tend to assume that Southern counties and town in the 19th Century were always pretty much the same. Most of them changed dramatically over time. For that reason I submit that Fannin County in 1860 differed significantly from Fannin County after the war. Here's a Google book that may help --
Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town, by Jacques D. Bagur.

People today cannot comprehend how much American life changed during the 1850s. Newspapers had been around for a while, but invention of the telegraph revolutionized news. No longer did it take weeks to learn what had happened in a distant location - you could read about it within 48 hours. As a result newspapers sprang up in almost every town, some county seats having two or more.

How did people in Fannin County know they were being threatened? Because the telegraph office in

The able to learn what was being said and done in distant locations helped people to feel connected. Since much of the news involved politics, much of what they read had a partisan flavor. Citizens read the news and identified with others like themselves who had suffered some insult or miscarriage of justice. That ability had a strong impact on the election of 1860 and secession.