Dear Southerners:

[Nope]

Being a southerner myself, I would like to remind you of the true character of the south immediately proceeding and during the civil war. The south was exceedingly christian and nary a slaveowner missed church. While the civil war was overtly over slavery, in the homes of the southerners it was a war over theological interpretation and doctrine of god's ratification of slavery. When brother fought against brother in Tennessee, it was while screaming over a family bible.

Very little of the southern population owned a slave, slaves were always expensive. The small minority of slaveowners could not have had any political sway even in the deepest south if it hadn't been for the tacit support from god in the bible, and the racist preachers and pastors that took up the slaveowner's cause. The southern baptists split from the baptists for a reason, and that reason was the furor over the morality to own slaves.

Southern Baptists broke away from Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery.

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississip...ration.asp

This is from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession. 

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Even today, poor southerners tend to vote against their own interests as long as god is invoked. It shouldn't be surprising that southerners in the 1800's did something similar. 


East Tennessee wanted to break away from the south but was not allowed. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_in_the_American_Civil_War