Why Did the South Secede From the Union ??

Why did the South secede from the Union right after Lincoln won the presidential election??  
Professors and authors claim it was because they feared he would try to keep slavery from spreading to the western territories.
 
But I tell you that they realized slavey was  a house of cards.
It was literally unstable -- like nitroglycerin.
The slave-holders were deathly afraid that Lincoln - just by being elected - could encourage slaves that had been docile
to suddenly say, "the Northerners are on our side.
If we can escape and reach the northern states, they'll help us get jobs and be free."
 
You see, southern plantations were prisons.
 .Slaves were literally prison inmates!!
But think about it -- they were INADEQUATE    
prisons, for there were no real walls or fences with barbed wire on top.
No guard towers and guards with rifles to shoot anybody climbing the fence in order
to escape.
I mean the slave owners depended on their slaves voluntarily refraining from escaping in the middle of the night -- and each night was a new opportunity !!
The plantation owners realized that just because their slaves hadn't escaped enmasse in the past,  
that didn't mean they couldn't try it in the  
future !!
The plantation owners realized that their slaves weren't the same slaves that they used to be.
They had heard about wild man John Brown's attempt to bring rifles to slaves so there could be armed rebellion and mass escaping to freedom.
They had heard about abolitionist Lincoln winning the election.
It was as if JOHN BROWN had won !!
The spirit of unbridled exuberance was in the air.
 
The slave owners literally feared their unpaid workers - worth thousands of dollars - could get caught up in this new spirit and make the mad dash for freedom.
 
Each slave was worth about $ 2,000 which in today's money would be $20,000.
A rich plantation owner with 100 slaves would lose $ 2,000,000 in today's dollars.
If all his slaves just took off in the middle of the night.
 
It wasn't just John Brown and Lincoln's election.
The Underground Railroad had been around for 20 to 30 years by 1861.
It had grown to where every slave knew about it.
And that abolitionists were taking runaway slaves in for a night and feeding them and then sending them to the next safe house along the way.to the north or to Canada.
News of which had a profound effect upon the imagination of blacks still stuck in the South.
 
If ordinary men lost thousands of dollars invested in slaves that would be frightful enuff.
But plantation owners didn't see themselves as ordinary.
Rather they were miniature kings, with slaves as their subjects.
As royalty, they couldn't bear the humiliation of slave revolts.(financial ruin).
LSS: the hothead Southerners were paranoid - except that their fears were well-founded.
To reiterate, plantations were prisons but without the walls, guard towers, that prisons need.
Attempted escape was incredibly feasible.
So the whole set-up of slavery was completely unstable.
All that was needed was for slaves' consciences to be raised.
And that's what was happening.