Let me state again at the outset that I am a Southerner, the descendant of Southerners who fought for the UNION. Many Southerners fought for the Union just as many Northerners fought for the Confederacy.
I've come to understand the Civil War was less black-and-white than I used to believe, but the neo-Confeds will never come to the same conclusion. Never mind that Jeff Davis did everything Lincoln did and did it first; he's a great "states' rights hero" and Lincoln is a tyrant. Never mind that these same lovers of localism consider Francisco Franco, George Papadopoulos, Rafael Trujillo, and Chiang Kai-shek to be heroes even though they were all centralizers who wouldn't tolerate localism of any kind. Never mind that J. Edgar Hoover advocated suspending habeas corpus; he's a great hero. Never mind that their own ancestors thought the New England secession advocates were "traitors" for wanting to leave the Union. Never mind that George Washington was a Federalist. Never mind any of that stuff. The Confederacy was pure and noble and born with no original sin (like the "indigenous pipples") and the evil United States of America was a demon from Hell (like old white males are today).
I often wonder what the neo-Confederates would do with contemporary Blacks (and I am one of the harshest critics of contemporary Black political behavior on this forum, if not THE harshest). If slavery is so essential to "Western civilization," would they re-enslave them? But then unlike their ancestors, today's "Confederates" consider these same Blacks (whom their ancestors loved so much they fought a war to keep) to be evil incarnate, an entire race of pointy-headed Marxist eggheads who came over here specifically to subvert "chrstian civilization" (apparently chrstianity isn't a belief but caucasian genes and chromosomes). Good gravy. What a dilemma!
What these palaeocons like the Birch Society (whose founder was a Massachusetts Unitarian who admired Ralph Waldo Emerson) also conveniently forget is that while certain sectors of the anti-slavery movement were indeed proto-leftist, others were merely moralist, opposing slavery for moral reasons just as they opposed polygamy, alcohol, gambling, etc. Though my religious beliefs are no longer the same as my ancestors, I am very proud of the Republican party's puritanical and moralistic heritage (a far cry from the "brandy and cigars on the veranda" cavaliers). We in the Upper South may be less Anglp-Saxon and more Celtic than our Deep South brethren (though so far as I know I am 100% Anglo-Saxon), but we are much more puritanical than they. I like to think of us as "Southern New England." That's why we voted for Hoover in 1928 while they voted for Smith.
I am so sick and tired of the Jacobin Thomas Jefferson's personal opinions being regarded as "the official and only true interpretation of the United States Constitution."
My family history is similar to yours with Scot and Welsh ancestors settling in the south