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You think like a Marxist, all this group motivation and collective guilt or vindication. You'll never get history at all, let alone the historic south. Slavery as an institution preexisted statehood. It was often hereditary, with one being born into holding slaves. Some freed theirs at a great economic cost. Others didn't. Some wouldn't out of actual concern for their well-being, which will no doubt sound odd to modern ears, particularly yours.

Some areas were heavily dependent upon slave labor, and some were not. That those areas not heavily dependent upon it were the ones moralizing the most is not at all surprising. Cheap morality, no skin off their noses.

That there were also regional rivalries and even ethnic differences played into the matter. There had been human bondage in one form or another for all recorded history up to that point, the southern states didn't invent the practice, and the United States did not put an end to it in the world, since it exists to this very day. Now, what were you saying, about this oddly hypnotic, all-powerful "slave power?"

RegulatorCountry: "You think like a Marxist, all this group motivation and collective guilt or vindication. You'll never get history at all, let alone the historic south."

Then you know nothing about Marxism, history or the South.
More important, you have zero reading comprehension, having understood only what you wished to think.

RegulatorCountry: "Slavery as an institution preexisted statehood."

And slavery was destroyed only because the Deep-South Slave Power first declared its secession, then provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States.

Had the white Slave Power been content to operate within strict Constitutional limits, slavery might still in some form be lawful today.

RegulatorCountry: "That those areas not heavily dependent upon it were the ones moralizing the most is not at all surprising.
Cheap morality, no skin off their noses."

Before 1860 virtually zero Northerners cared a whit about slavery in the South.
They considered it a necessary price for Union and before 1856 all Northerners voted for pro-slavery parties -- Democrats or Whigs.

It was only when the white Slave Power began to overreach -- most especially in the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision -- trying to make slavery legal everywhere that the majority of Northerners decided: enough was enough.

RegulatorCountry: "Now, what were you saying, about this oddly hypnotic, all-powerful 'slave power?' "

Thanks for that question.
The white Slave Power ruled the United States from the Founding in 1787, until it declared secession in 1861.
It's the reason Thomas Jefferson (no, not Bill Clinton) was called "the first Negro President" -- because Jefferson had been elected President by those 3/5 of slaves counted for representation purposes.

Before Lincoln in 1860 not one seriously anti-slavery President had ever been elected, and Slave Power representatives dominated Federal Government in Washington -- the Presidency, the Senate, House, Supreme Court and the highest military officials.

These people all supported expansion of slavery into territories and even into non-slave states, as seen in the 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision.

That was too much for most Northerners, and it drove them to switch from pro-slavery parties -- Democrats and Whigs -- to anti-slavery Republicans.