You need to read "Life in The Confederate Army" by William Watson, a Scotsman who got caught up in the war. He was not a citizen of the United States and his take on the secession movement and who led it, as opposed to who actually fought the war is enlightening. Between December 1860 and April 1861 the political landscape in the South flip-flopped. Those fire-eaters groups who wrote those four "declarations" basically dissolved and lost power to men who had opposed secession for years, and now were all for it because of what Lincoln was doing.