Tennessee didn't have an official Declaration of Causes document but they did have a governor who gave a speech imploring the state legislature to vote for secession. Here's a quote:
Tennessee Governor Isham G. Harris wrote:
The States entered the Union upon terms of perfect political equality, each delegating certain powers to the General Government, but neither deterring any power to the other to interfere with its reserved rights or domestic affairs; hence, there is no power on earth which can rightfully determine whether slavery shall or shall not exist within the limits of any State, except the people thereof acting in their highest sovereign capacity.
The attempt of the Northern people, through the instrumentality of the Federal Govermuent--their State governments, and emigrant aid societies--to confine this species of property within the limits of the present Southern States--to impair its value by constant agitation and refusal to deliver up the fugitive--to appropriate the whole of the Territories, which are the common property all the people of all the States, to the Southern man who is unwilling to live under a government which, may by law recognize the free negroe as his equal; "and in fine, to put the question where the Northern mind will rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction" is justly regarded by the people of the Southern States as a gross and palpable violation of the spirit and obvious meaning of the compact of Union--an impertinent intermeddling with their domestic affairs, destructive of fraternal feeling, ordinary comity, and well defined rights.
As slavery receded from the North, it was followed by the most violent and fanatical opposition. At first the anti-slavery cloud, which now overshadows the nation, was no larger than a man's hand. Most of you can remember, with vivid distinctness, those days of brotlierhood,.when throughout the whole North, the abolitionist was justly regarded as an enemy of his country. Weak, diminutive and contemptible as was this part in the purer days of the Republic, it has now grown to collossal proportions, and its recent rapid strides to power, have given it possession of the.present House of Representatives, and elected one of its leaders to the Presidency of the United States; and in the progress of events, the Senate and Supreme Court must also soon pass into the hands of this party--a party upon whose revolutionary banner is inscribed, "No more slave States, no more slave Territory, no return of the fugitive to his master"--an "irrepressible conflict" between the Free and Slave States; "and whether it, be long or short, peaceful or bloody, the struggle shall go on, until the sun shall not rise upon a master or set upon a slave."
Interestingly, he goes on to ***** about how terrible it is that California entered the nation as a free territory and so the "southern people" could not exploit its wealth, because apparently you can't be a "southern man" unless you own some black dudes to do all your work for you:
Quote:
It excluded, by the same Compromise, the Southern people from California, whose mineral wealth, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate, is not surpassed on earth, by prematurely forcing her into the Union under a Constitution, conceived in fraud by a set of adventurers, in the total absence of any law authorizing the formation of a Constitution, fixing the qualification of voters, regulating the time, place, or manner of electing delegates, or the time or place of the meeting of such Convention. Yet all these irregular and unauthorized proceedings were.sanctified by the fact that the Constitution prohibited slavery, and forever closed the doors of that rich and desirable territory against the Southern people. And while the Southern mind was still burning under a humiliating sense of this wrong, it refused to admit Kansas into the Union upon a Constitution, framed by authority of Congress, and by delegates elected in conforinity to law, upon the ground that slavery was recognized and protected.
It wasn't really about slavery though. It was about... uhhh... mineral rights! And whether or not you could use your slaves to exploit them.