Anthony Trollope, a British citizen who traveled extensively in the North and South during the first part of the ware observed that "The South is seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and a different culture."
Trollope observed that, other than language, there was very little that the two sections held in common: "They [the South] had become a separate people, dissevered from the North by habits, morals, institutions, pursuits, and every conceivable differences in their mods of thought and action. They still spoke the same language, as so Austria and Prussia, but beyond that tie of language they had no bond but that of a meager political union..."
The influence of the various cultures that populated Colonial America has been documented by David H. Fisher in his book Albion's Seed. Fisher, and Northerner, demonstrates the four primary emigration patterns originating in the British Isles. The various cultural distinctions of these people which he documents influenced such social behaviour as dietary preferences, mode of dress, and religious attitudes. The early emigration patterns to the South came principally from North Britain (Northern England and Scotland), Northern Ireland, and the Saxon areas of South England. The New England colonies received more emigrants from the traditionally English East Anglia (Puritans), and the middle colonies received the bulk of Quakers from the North midlands of England. Thus the cultural differences between the North and South originated in the British Isles. The People who came to this continent did not forsake their ancient folkways, attitudes, and grudges, but adapted them to the new environment.
John Adams, while attending the Continental Congress, wrote home to his wife describing the stark dissimilarity between the two peoples of the Northerner and Southern Colonies. He confided to his wife that his impression that these two peoples were so different that the political union could not be held together "Without the utmost caution on both sides."
George Mason also noted that the inhabitants of the North and South were "so very different in manners, habits, and customs."
Yeah yeah yeah, what do they know.
I've seen the recruiting posters that these Maine recruits responded to. The posters appealed to the men's innermost honor by asking them to end the horror of slavery, and respond they did...many or most to die on the battlefield.
So whatever intellectual arguments the high-up mucky-mucks may have had for prosecuting the Civil War, the cannon fodder from Maine were fighting and dying to end slavery.
By the way, aren't you supposed to give attribution when you copy/paste stuff like that?