Is New England and the South voting opposite each other explained by slavery and the Civil War?

[RINO Tom]

These types of topics have been discussed often, and I am far from the most qualified to answer, so I will just post a couple of notes to consider:

1) As others have said, the characterization of the South as being more religious (and by extension more "morally conservative") is not at all accurate across American history, even if it is today.  The same New England that some think has always been more "secular" or "science-oriented" was the home of Blue Laws and the main hotbed of Puritanism.  Primary sources of slaveholders mock the abolitionists of the North as quite literally being anti-intellectual, religious fanatics who reject the very basic science backing genetic inferiority of Blacks.  Anyone seen the seen in Django where Leonardo talks about measuring the skull?  Obviously, this shlt turned out to be wrong, but let's not pretend like the Southern plantation owners were direct political ancestors of the Evangelical White Southerners who, for example, might oppose federal intervention to protect gay rights.  The end result might be the same in your view, but I'd argue there are dangerously inaccurate conclusions to make if you treat them as ideologically the same.

2) How many people here draw too many conclusions about how our parties have changed since 1990 based on how Virginia and Colorado vote?  Maybe a few, but not many ... the reason is that, being not far removed from our own contemporary politics, we see that it is quite obvious that the states themselves changing had a lot more to do with that.  Diversification of the electorate, generational displacement and an influx of out-of-state voters fundamentally changed these states politically, and since we obviously live in the modern day, it's obvious for us to see that 70-year old White men in Virginia and Colorado are probably voting exactly as they did in 1990 ... problem is, they're outnumbered now.  Now, imagine a region as fundamentally changed as the South from Antebellum until the Twenty-First Century...

[RINO Tom]

We have to remember that there have been massive cultural changes in both the North and the South.  The popular narrative of the Godless Northern industrial machine against the God-fearing Southern farmer is not an accurate picture of what actually happened.  In reality, the North had a lot of people who would be described as "Bible-thumpers" and religious imagery was common in Union propaganda.

Religious vs secular values play a huge role in the difference between New England and Southern voting patterns since the 1980s.  But it was irrelevant to the differences between voting patterns there in the 19th century.

True. In the colonial period New England Puritans saw themselves as thrifty men of God, while they looked down upon the Southern tobacco planters as greedy godless men only interested in turning a profit. However, I would caution against those who might view this New England piety as innately "conservative". In those times religiosity, especially the sort of Protestant fundamentalism espoused by the Puritans, was highly linked with the same sort of radical anti-monarchist tendencies that had brought Cromwell to power. By contrast, the amorality of the Southern barons was perfectly in line with the libertine culture of aristocratic England.

....American conservatism is highly anti aristocratic and anti monarchist. There’s a reason half our symbols (the Gadsden flag, etc) are from a literal war against a monarchy, and that one of the most popular things for our politicians to do is bash “the elites”

Right, but that is why people sometimes say that the original American political system was "fundamentally liberal," as our nation rejected monarchism on all sides.  This is another example of how Hamilton does not belong anywhere but on the far right of his day's political spectrum.  Unlike other areas, America's conservatism and liberalism developed around systems that were fundamentally more "left-leaning" than monarchism, but the dynamic still maintained the BASIC dividing line between true right-wing and left-wing thinking: the concentration of wealth and power.  I would argue that, at their cores, liberalism HAS to derive from a desire to do something about that concentration, and conservatism HAS to derive from a suspicion that dismantling that concentration too quickly or too much will cause chaos.

Even something like being overly woke or shouting about racism where it isn't apparent - a trait many on the right today associate with liberal "elites" - derives itself from an inherent belief that our country has a systemic preference for a privileged White "race," and we must take action to address that.  Even climate change activism - another thing that many people now associate with well-off granola types who can afford to spend their time virtue signaling while others struggle to get by - is in some way derived from the belief that there is a power base that is destroying the environment for its own profit, and "the people" (who now too often ARE made up of upper-middle class virtue signalers, admittedly) must do something to "decentralize" the power to wreck our environment from a wealthy few in the business community.

None of this is to say that you couldn't be a conservative and oppose racism on grounds that have nothing to do with liberalism (enter Quaker abolitionists looking to rid society of sin) or be a conservative and support environmental protection measures for reasons that have nothing to do with liberalism (enter rugged individualist and self-made man who hunts and fishes and lives in the woods), but nearly all "liberal" attitudes - no matter how bastardized and distorted - found their origins in a belief that something was unfair about society, and they had to fix it.  Nearly all conservative viewpoints - no matter how bastardized and distorted - found their origins in a belief that radical or overly fast change/dismantling of hierarchy would be irresponsible and therefore dangerous to society.

American conservatism has always strictly rejected monarchy as a whole, but I think it's clear that the first American conservatives were clearly suspicious of Jeffersonians' preferred speed at which to form a brand new, "overly democratic" society, and they feared they would shed too much of the societal structure in doing so ... placing them, even if subtly, "closer to monarchists" than the liberals of their day.  And there is NOTHING wrong with that.

[RINO Tom]

We have to remember that there have been massive cultural changes in both the North and the South.  The popular narrative of the Godless Northern industrial machine against the God-fearing Southern farmer is not an accurate picture of what actually happened.  In reality, the North had a lot of people who would be described as "Bible-thumpers" and religious imagery was common in Union propaganda.

Religious vs secular values play a huge role in the difference between New England and Southern voting patterns since the 1980s.  But it was irrelevant to the differences between voting patterns there in the 19th century.

True. In the colonial period New England Puritans saw themselves as thrifty men of God, while they looked down upon the Southern tobacco planters as greedy godless men only interested in turning a profit. However, I would caution against those who might view this New England piety as innately "conservative". In those times religiosity, especially the sort of Protestant fundamentalism espoused by the Puritans, was highly linked with the same sort of radical anti-monarchist tendencies that had brought Cromwell to power. By contrast, the amorality of the Southern barons was perfectly in line with the libertine culture of aristocratic England.

....American conservatism is highly anti aristocratic and anti monarchist. There’s a reason half our symbols (the Gadsden flag, etc) are from a literal war against a monarchy, and that one of the most popular things for our politicians to do is bash “the elites”.

None of this is to say that you couldn't be a conservative and oppose racism on grounds that have nothing to do with liberalism (enter Quaker abolitionists looking to rid society of sin) or be a conservative and support environmental protection measures for reasons that have nothing to do with liberalism (enter rugged individualist and self-made man who hunts and fishes and lives in the woods), but nearly all "liberal" attitudes - no matter how bastardized and distorted - found their origins in a belief that something was unfair about society, and they had to fix it.  Nearly all conservative viewpoints - no matter how bastardized and distorted - found their origins in a belief that radical or overly fast change/dismantling of hierarchy would be irresponsible and therefore dangerous to society.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand, but I'll say it again. Being religious or moralistic does not a conservative make. Like you said, conservatism is based in the defense of power, wealth, and hierarchy. Contrary to what the evangelicals of the Religious Right would have you think, these conservative values do not necessarily align with the principles of the highly religious. Was William Jennings Bryan a conservative?...

I will check out your thread and try to learn a bit more about the other content of your post; I am not tied to literally any belief I hold to the point where I wouldn't change it given other evidence, or at least refine it.  As for the part I left quoted, I was not saying that being religious or moralistic made a motive conservative.  I think if your egalitarian motive is derived from your intense religious belief, it is clearly a liberal motive.  However, I do think that the "eradication of sin" angle was not necessarily from that point of view.  There were many abolitionists who frankly couldn't have cared less what actually HAPPENED to these freed Blacks (i.e., their well-being) but rather feared what God would think of a society that enslaved a human being, even an allegedly inferior one.  I would argue a lot of this viewpoint actually came from a strictly elitist perspective, looking down on both the unrighteous masses and the godless, money-hungry plantation owners.

Maybe I should not have used the Quakers, then, but I have seen several quotes from abolitionists that came off a lot more like Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame than the kindly priest he shoves down the stairs, if you will.