They were socialists opposed to non-socialism. Plunk them down in the "Workers' Paradise" of 1950's East Germany, and every damned one of them would have joined the Stasi or the Vopos.
A lot of people "opposed to slavery" didn't share fundamentals with the Beechers; they were Free Soilers instead who didn't want to see black bond labor west of the Mississippi. They were not pro-emancipation; they were anti-competition. They knew industrial agriculture was a threat to their livelihoods. That's why they opposed the expansion of slavery, and Lincoln knew the difference, too, which was why he trod the line he set out for himself and the Republican Party ..... at least until he was satisfied that he had achieved something like Total Power over the federal government.
You just keep spinning out these nutty digressions. Refuting them only encourages you. But here goes.
They were socialists opposed to non-socialism. Plunk them down in the "Workers' Paradise" of 1950's East Germany, and every damned one of them would have joined the Stasi or the Vopos.
First of all, not all the 48ers were socialists. Secondly, most of the socialists in Germany (Social Democrats) in the 1950s opposed Communism and the GDR. Third, taking somebody from one era and popping them in another century when they weren't alive and asking what they would think or do is nonsensical. A person, say, from the 19th century with 19th century ideas confronted with 20th century realities would take some time to figure out just what was going on. So are you talking about some naive person who has done no thinking at all about new circumstances or somebody who's painfully thought things through and come to some knowledge about the new age? Either way, what you're talking about can't be proved one way or the other because the experiment can't be performed. It's sort of like saying that if you lived in 1860 you would have supported slavery -- so I guess it's okay to say that now.
But finally, I was originally talking about today's Midwestern farmers, shopkeepers, and working people of German or Scandinavian ancestry, who certainly aren't socialists or liberals or intellectuals, but who don't think as you do and don't share your affection for the old South. That you insult them and have to go back half a century or a century and a half for your attack suggests that maybe you aren't their best friend or their natural ally, which was the point I was trying to make.
No, I am not talking about immigrant Poles stoking blast furnaces or mill girls getting porked by their supervisors, which was one of the charming features of the Millocracy prewar that so set them apart from the planters they accused of miscegenation with the help.
Such "porking" (do we really have to use that word?) happened. But it was more likely to happen with household servants and their masters, and more likely to occur in conditions of slavery than in free labor situations. So back in your court (though you're the one who brought it up).
What I was getting at, though, is that not everybody in New England was a Cabot or a Lowell, just as not everybody in the South was a Randolph or a Pinckney. But somehow the Yankees are always "Muffy and Buffy and Skip and Chip and all the other legacy snots who've directed America like a toy train set since 1860 while sneering at anyone who didn't own a Yale sweater," as you put it, and the Southerners are always the put-upon working guys.
But those Cabots and Lowells weren't a large part even of the native born population. Ask the old Yankees in the Berkshires or on the Maine Coast who staffed (along with Irish and other immigrants) the mansions of the New York millionaires. It wasn't their palaces they were cleaning.
Part of the poverty of the South after the Civil War had to do with losing the war. Part of it had to do with the slump in agricultural prices, something which affected farmers in other parts of the country as well (including the West and the rural Northeast).
Those were hard times for a lot of people. Putting so much reliance on cotton, though, was a lousy move. Even without the war and even without increases in domestic production those prices were going to fall when Africa, India, Latin America and other parts of the world enter production in a big way.
But I don't know about clinging to grievances from a century ago. Being perpetually angry about things that happened before you were born (and being so one-sided about everything that happened) may stoke your self-righteousness, but it may not be the best way to make friends or win allies.