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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No. The Midwest and the Western states were also just as much opposed to slavery, but both are red/purple today. Even for New England, if NE had the same demographics today as it did then, it would probably be only 50-60% D instead of 60-70%. There is no simple answer, but

There is an argument to be made New England was less against the abolition of Slavery than the Midwest and West.

Lincoln carried New York by 1% or 7,000 votes
Pennsylvania by 3% and 18,000 votes
Connecticut by 3% and 2,000 votes
New Hampshire by 5%  and 3,000 votes

If the Battle of Atlanta had gone a different way it is extremely likely that Lincoln loses in 1864 and General McClellan is President. 

This is very misleading. For one it is a very expansive definition of New England beyond the normal six states to include the Mid-Atlantic states of NY and PA as well, and that is problematic for various reasons.

Pius Yankee New Englanders were overwhelmingly Republican. More mainstream protestant sects were evenly divided and Catholics of course were overwhelmingly Democratic, this is why the margins were so close in CT and NY. NH was the most Democratic New England state prior to the war, drawing on a long Jacksonian tradition.

PA was very divided demographically. The Quaker influenced SE of PA and the Yankee Northern counties plus the counties linking them together (Union and Snyder) were very Republican leaning. However the block of counties along the NJ border (Northampton to Pike) tended to be non-Yankee whites, as did large portions of West Central and Southern PA, where the state was more culturally Southern, this made them more Democratic and thus it was a closely divided state, but its continued growth (especially Philly) and dependence on steel would generally keep it Republican thanks to the tariff issue going forward until the Great Depression.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

I countered most all of his points in that thread. I also recommend you check you this out: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=301507.msg6617130#msg6617130

Yes, Protestant zealots were liberal extremists in 1649 in England, but this is not 1649 in England. There is also more this story than just the Civil War, there also the Glorious Revolution as well. For one thing, as one British politician put it around 1810 "The Gov't of this country for the past century is and could only have been a Whig Gov't". Absolutism was dead and so was 17th century Toryism. So much so that the politicians to whom the label Tory was being applied were all Whigs of some form or another. When the old paradigm is destroy typically by a complete victory for the "liberalism" of the day, a new divide often forms along new battle lines.

Now cross over to America where as I said before, the American Revolution was a bunch of a Whigs rebelling against a Whig British gov't for not adhering to Whig principles and just like Whigs in the mother country, they sought to tar (literally) their opponents with the label of Tory. Even before the Revolution ended there was a growing divide between radicals like Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine and more conservative revolutionaries like John Adams and later James Madison. A good example of this was the abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania, with all of its Quaker influence, it was the first state to do it but took forever to implement meaning that almost to the 1830's, there were still slaves in PA. People like Thomas Paine were aghast by this slow process. You would think that a state influenced by such an "egalitarian" group as Quakers, wouldn't be so cautious and restrained (almost Burkean) in its elimination of slavery over several decades. I would also draw attention to the fact that CT taxed its citizens to support a state church (Congregationalism), which is a rather hierarchical establishment of an albeit non-hierarchical denomination (see how this works now?).
  

This is the important point and why I always stress when dividing 19th century conservatism from period liberalism that "Dominant religious order" as opposed to a specific religious entity, precisely because that is going to differ by country. Protestantism was the dominant group in the US by far and furthermore, regardless of fervor in that regards, when confronted with a demographic challenge from Catholic immigrants, these voters unified behind the existing power structure to preserve their traditional dominance of society, against the newcomer.

This is why abstract consideration of internal Catholic hierarchy versus "egalitarianism" in protestant sects is misleading, because the latter was the dominant political, social and economic group in America and the former were the outsiders trying to break their way into the action. This means that historical internal (religious) considerations are irrelevant and Pious Northern Protestants in MA for example, became heavily in favor of the American Party (tossed out the elitist whigs in 1854) and then almost immediately folded into the Republican Party once the American Party split on abolition. Yes you see spurts of the egalitarianism (1854), but it is clear what the priority is, abolitionism and religious hegemony and dominance and thus why they joined the Republicans after voting out the Whigs for a nativist party.

Before this tribal polarization, there was indeed a strong Jeffersonian tradition in rural New England against the Mercantile elite that backed the Federalist Party. Likewise there were pockets of Jacksonian support in rural New England (mainly in CT, NH and ME, but also parts of MA) that were against the elitist textile mill owners and old line blue blooded aristocrats that dominated the Whigs. Massive Catholic immigration eroded this egalitarian tradition and lead to tribal polarization behind the more anti-egalitarian party (anti-Immigrant), which ended up being the more elitist party as well. .

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Much more abolitionist than average New England vs. the Southern Slave Power, the former being extremely Unionist against the latter literally being the Confederacy.

I’d argue that the specific political parties the two regions happen to be dominated by at any given point in history aren’t nearly as important as the consistent pattern of the two regions being polarized against one another politically.

I would say slavery more so than the Civil War itself. The existence of slavery restricted and defined the manner in which the South could develop economically. This meant that the North would pursue developmental capitalism, while the South remained stagnant with its plantation economy. This explains the increasingly vast differentials in railroads, canals, factories, bank deposits and even agricultural output of food stuffs being so increasingly lopsided towards the North. This dictated a desire for different economic policies as the New England states increasingly benefited from infant industry protectionism while the South wanted to be able to take their massive profit margins derived from essentially stolen labor to important British and other European finished goods.

This explains the divergence on trade policy and by extension the fundamental economic difference between the two regions and that stems from the roll slavery played in the Southern economy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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.

I countered most all of his points in that thread. I also recommend you check you this out: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=301507.msg6617130#msg6617130

Yes, Protestant zealots were liberal extremists in 1649 in England, but this is not 1649 in England. There is also more this story than just the Civil War, there also the Glorious Revolution as well. For one thing, as one British politician put it around 1810 "The Gov't of this country for the past century is and could only have been a Whig Gov't". Absolutism was dead and so was 17th century Toryism. So much so that the politicians to whom the label Tory was being applied were all Whigs of some form or another. When the old paradigm is destroy typically by a complete victory for the "liberalism" of the day, a new divide often forms along new battle lines.

Now cross over to America where as I said before, the American Revolution was a bunch of a Whigs rebelling against a Whig British gov't for not adhering to Whig principles and just like Whigs in the mother country, they sought to tar (literally) their opponents with the label of Tory. Even before the Revolution ended there was a growing divide between radicals like Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine and more conservative revolutionaries like John Adams and later James Madison. A good example of this was the abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania, with all of its Quaker influence, it was the first state to do it but took forever to implement meaning that almost to the 1830's, there were still slaves in PA. People like Thomas Paine were aghast by this slow process. You would think that a state influenced by such an "egalitarian" group as Quakers, wouldn't be so cautious and restrained (almost Burkean) in its elimination of slavery over several decades. I would also draw attention to the fact that CT taxed its citizens to support a state church (Congregationalism), which is a rather hierarchical establishment of an albeit non-hierarchical denomination (see how this works now?).
  

This is the important point and why I always stress when dividing 19th century conservatism from period liberalism that "Dominant religious order" as opposed to a specific religious entity, precisely because that is going to differ by country. Protestantism was the dominant group in the US by far and furthermore, regardless of fervor in that regards, when confronted with a demographic challenge from Catholic immigrants, these voters unified behind the existing power structure to preserve their traditional dominance of society, against the newcomer.

This is why abstract consideration of internal Catholic hierarchy versus "egalitarianism" in protestant sects is misleading, because the latter was the dominant political, social and economic group in America and the former were the outsiders trying to break their way into the action. This means that historical internal (religious) considerations are irrelevant and Pious Northern Protestants in MA for example, became heavily in favor of the American Party (tossed out the elitist whigs in 1854) and then almost immediately folded into the Republican Party once the American Party split on abolition. Yes you see spurts of the egalitarianism (1854), but it is clear what the priority is, abolitionism and religious hegemony and dominance and thus why they joined the Republicans after voting out the Whigs for a nativist party.

Before this tribal polarization, there was indeed a strong Jeffersonian tradition in rural New England against the Mercantile elite that backed the Federalist Party. Likewise there were pockets of Jacksonian support in rural New England (mainly in CT, NH and ME, but also parts of MA) that were against the elitist textile mill owners and old line blue blooded aristocrats that dominated the Whigs. Massive Catholic immigration eroded this egalitarian tradition and lead to tribal polarization behind the more anti-egalitarian party (anti-Immigrant), which ended up being the more elitist party as well. .

No need to go any further; you've already convinced me. In fact, in this thread I went over why New England changed from the most liberal (Anglophobic) region to the most conservative (Anglophile) one^*. At this point I've begrudingly accepted that the Federalists and Whigs were the conservatives of their day, though I'm still not convinced about the 19th and early 20th century Republicans. But that's a topic for a different thread (you know the one).

So then why make such a long post about the Quakers? Well, I feel that when people focus on the American 19th century they sometimes lose sight of other important history. Sure, that other history may not be relevant to 19th century America, but I still think it's important to remember that there was a time and place (most of history throughout most of the world) where Protestants were the liberals and Catholics the conservatives. Whenever someone describes Protestants as rich elitists or Catholics as poor immigrants, I feel obligated to jump in and say that that wasn't always the case, even if it was true in 19th century America.

Furthermore, when the Quakers distinguished themselves in colonial America by being early supporters of abolition, Northern Protestants were still in their phase as Anglophobic liberals. Even post-independence when they had transitioned to being Anglophile conservatives, I doubt the Quakers would have done so. It seems unlikely to me that such an egalitarian sect would adopt the elitist views favored by other WASPS.


*That's not to say that Anglophobia or Anglophilia were necessarily liberal or conservative, respectively. Far from it. Like you said, 18th century England was a Whiggish and liberal country, but the Americans (New Englanders especially) outWhigged them, and thus the British of the 1770s suddenly found themselves being called Tories. In the 1790s Britain once again found itself the defender of the old conservative order, this time against the radical and republican French. They were still a Whiggish constitutional monarchy, but by that point such a system was no longer so liberal anymore. As Truman said in the Puritans as democrats thread, "what had been eminently democratic in the seventeenth century became undemocratic and conservative in the nineteenth century."

Similarly it is important to remember the change occurs by degree and in this case for instance the fact that Britain was a "Constitutional" monarchy doesn't mean it was a democracy. There is more to democracy than just voting, but it is a critical aspect and prior to the late 19th and early 20th century, very few people in Britain could vote.

This also plays into the whole concept that Truman mentioned in another thread about the Congressional/Parliamentary Aristocrat/financial elite versus the Plebian focused executive/Monarch. You see this with Caesar, with Napoleon, and with Andrew Jackson. Charles I also tried to play this card at his trial, but it was too little, much too late.

Populism is hard to define as left or right because either the left or the right can be populist at a particular time. Populism is just the mirror opposite of what elite society is and thus it will typically be idiosycrantic and hard to pin down in a give time and place. Occasionally you can say that populism was a force from the left, especially if the elite is Monarchical or Aristocratic, or heavily business focused such as the WASP elite prior to the New Deal.

One thing that people fail to accommodate for is that groups themselves can change on their own without having to be displaced by a different group. We have seen displacement in action combined with such support attrition (Orange County, NOVA etc), and their were examples of this in the past. UES could elect Conservatives (Though it did not always do so) through the 1950's (Bruce Barton comes to mind and also Coudert, it's last one). It is very important to account for the impact of the New Deal and its political longevity, in shifting and remaking the the NE elite (which had been one centered solely around business and old money) to one more focused on government and academia, which in turn has a transformative impact on the communities that used to be heavily Republican within cities and why along with other factors cities became island of Democratic support surrounded by oceans of suburban Republicanism. Kevin Phillips discusses this transformation at length and no summary can do justify to that description, but it underscores why the right since Goldwater has been rather populist and anti-Washington since Goldwater. If you think about it and play it out, it also explains why suburbs mature and become more Democratic leaning as well. The interests economically become more like that of the city itself rather than just churches and don't raise my taxes.