[Pelham]

More attention should be paid to the ordinary whites of the South and what made them act as they did in 1861. Probably most of them would have spoken in terms of defending their homes from the Yankees. But why had they come to see the Yankees as so different from themselves that they did not want to be in the same country with them?

Probably because the Northern zeal for civil war was so pronounced that a warning about it was included in the 1859 State of the Union message to Congress.

"Whilst it is the duty of the President "from time to time to give to Congress information of the state of the Union," I shall not refer in detail to the recent sad and bloody occurrences at Harpers Ferry. Still, it is proper to observe that these events, however bad and cruel in themselves, derive their chief importance from the apprehension that they are but symptoms of an incurable disease in the public mind, which may break out in still more dangerous outrages and terminate at last in an open war by the North to abolish slavery in the South. "

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/third-annual-message-congress-the-state-the-union

[TwelveOfTwenty]

President Lincoln had to deal with the fact that not everyone in the North was with the cause. Frederick Douglas explained it better than I ever could so I'll refer to to his writings.

14 paragraphs down, if you want to skip to the point at hand.

Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln Frederick Douglass | April 14, 1876