THE NORTH/SOUTH DIFFERENCE HAS EXISTED FOR A LONG TIME

In Cracker Culture, Grady McWhinney gives two selections from observers from about 150 years ago (p. 251):

Two antebellum observers summed up how preferences for urban and rural values separated Northerners and Southerners. "The Northern People have interested themselves chiefly in commerce, manufactures, literature, and the like," wrote Daniel R. Hundley, "and we behold the result in the ships, the steamers, telegraphs, the thousand practical inventions, the works of art and genius they have already furnished the world. On the other hand, the South has interested herself in agriculture mainly, political economy, and the nurture of an adventurous and military race." Southerners, as Hundley pointed out, were "enamoured of . . . the Army" and were more warlike than Northerners, who were "not so military in their habits," contended Frederick Hall, "because, though equally brave [as Southerners] and enterprising, they were more industrious, more frugal, and less mercurial in their temperament. Religion was with them a powerful spring of action, and discouraged all wars except those of self-defence. The social and moral virtues, the sciences and arts, were cherished and respected; and there were many roads to office and to eminence [in the North], which were safer and more certain, and not less honourable, than the bloody path of warlike achievement.""