“I think most Southerners underestimate — have no idea — how much wealthy and Eastern Republicans despise and loathe them.”
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Well, I think I do. The divide is old and associated with lots of scars. The independence of the West, most of it based on oil and agriculture, drives them insane crazy.
A friend of mine worked for Republic Bank (1st chartered business in TX, named: “The Republic of Texas” in the charter), the one that went down in a long ago oil slump. He told me that bank had been self financing with oil money and never went to East Coast Banks for help. Consequently, they got caught in the slump and the vultures descended. A cousin of mine was a stockholder, they were told they were insolvent and the major stockholders pumped a ton of money into it, not many months later they were in the same situation. They eventually failed and East Coast elements took it over. It did not work out well for them either. They did not have the necessary humanity to deal with Texas customers.
And as far back as the entry of Texas into the U.S. it was similar. Those same interests did not like anything that threatened their power.
Headshake. Here we are again, similar circumstance.
True. John Quincy Adams, the same guy who dreamed up the Civil War (as a "cure" for slavery, you understand .... nothing but the highest motives, tut tut), fought a personal crusade to keep Texas cash-starved and out of the Union. It was John C. Calhoun <hissssss!!> who got Texas a serious loan that allowed something like a non-barter economy to start up in the state and eventually secured Texas entry to the Union as one of the few States that, like Vermont and Hawaii, that were States before admission to the Union.
To Yankees like Adams, continuation and extension of New England's political power was more important than expansion of the United States to the Pacific (Oregon was different, of course: it was settled by transplanted Yankees) or, in 1859-1861, simply keeping the peace and avoiding an internecine War Between the States.
The motto of New Hampshire is "Live Free or Die". That of Massachusetts has always seemed to be, "Ruat caelum, We Must Rule".