[Colonel Kangaroo]

Nobody will ever convince me the poor, young white boys of the South fought, and were willing to die, for the Confederacy to continue slavery. There was a huge cultural difference between North and South and I think most southerners simply resented Yankees dictating the fate of southerners.

Slavery was the only significant cultural difference between the North and South in 1860. The county where my dad's folks came from in Tennessee voted over 6 to 1 to remain in the Union. Of course there were very few slaves in that mountainous region of Tennessee. And that pattern generally held in all the relatively slaveless areas in the South. No slavery, no desire to secede. The farmer from Tennessee had much more in common with the farmer from Indiana than he did with the slaveowner from the deep South.

[basque]

Lincoln provides the key to understanding his presidency. "I had to operate the machine the way I found it."All piecemeal citations of this giant are nothing but renewed assassination attempts by pygmies against the mythic one.

[Bigun]

Slavery was the only significant cultural difference between the North and South in 1860.

That statement is so astoundingly misguided it defies description. There were innumerable cultural differences between the north and south at that time! Literally innumerable!

[basque]

There's a story that the Yankees captured a young Confederate soldier in Tennessee and asked him why he was fighting. His response, "because you're down here!!" The young man spoke volumes.

[canalabamian]

Of course there were very few slaves in that mountainous region of Tennessee. And that pattern generally held in all the relatively slaveless areas in the South. No slavery, no desire to secede.

I don't know about TN, but you'll see more Battle Flags in the mountainous regions of GA than most anywhere else in the state. Same reasons, no dominate agriculturally based economy during the drive to secede, thus no economic attachment to the movement.

The region's mindset changed post-bellum as the Federal "revenuers" started taking an interest in taxing the moonshine that previously had been overlooked. Then they mountaineers began to see why the other Southrons had resisted a powerful, centralized government.