Well, yeah, Stephen, that's the stock answer.

I think the influences of ancestral cultures and thought patterns, beliefs, etc. are interesting to explore.

A great deal of the white population in the antebellum South have a Celtic (for want of a better word) background. While Celtic ancestry in the North can be found, it's my position that population density in an already existing non-Celtic culture there, caused that "Scotch-Irish" type influence to be swallowed up moreso than it did in the South. In other words, it influenced the Southern culture to a much greater extent than it did in the Northern; hence part of the emerging differences we see in these "two countries within one".

What we see today as sectional differences are "handed down", so to speak. While today's rapid migration mixes the two much more than in, say, my grandparent's day ... still, one wonders how long the Southron-to-the-bone type can deal with living in the Northern culture? (and vice versa)

This post is trying to state my thoughts in deplorably oversimplified ways. I'm not at all sure it conveys what I'm trying to say. Best I can do and remain anything like concise.

Penny