Funny you should say that as I have always believed a book could be written as to how New England Liberals, led by all the colleges up there, reflect the ethos of their predecessors in that they see themselves as the Elect; consider anyone who disagrees with them as "heretics" deserving of punishment; strive to impose their views on all others, for their own good, of course. I could go on but that is the basic skeleton for an interesting social analysis.
I think books like that have been written. Don’t remember where I first saw it, but there’s a thesis that after the Salem witch trials, which contemporaries viewed as a ridiculous hysteria, Puritanism took a severe PR hit. In order to reclaim the moral high ground, later Puritans and/or their inheritors glommed on to anti-slavery as the next crusade. As they spread westward, they took the new errand of anti-slavery with them, setting up the civil war years later.