It certainly took them long enough. And it's pretty much evidence that these essentialist theories of there being some particular "Yankee" character or some "Southern" set of virtues or ideas are wrong. The opposition is constant. North and South or New England and the Southeast tend to take opposite positions on the political spectrum. But those actual positions taken aren't constant over time. In the days of Bryan or Wilson a representative from Georgia or Oklahoma or Arkansas would generally have been more radical and less well inclined towards capitalism than one from Massachusetts or Vermont. Things have changed as regional and national dynamics have changed, and they may well change again, though the tension between Northeast and Southeast will probably remain as long as the country does.
If you look back to the 17th century, the first Puritans were by and large the middle classes, craftsmen, mechanics, farmers and small landholders resentful of the rich. There have been criticisms of this view, but it still holds up in many ways. These were the people who settled New England. The cavaliers who settled Virginia were the other side. One could trace the present day Yankee-Rebel animosities back to those days.
What's interesting is that the Southern backcountry Celts took up the battle. To be sure, they had reason to hate or dislike Cromwell's Puritans, but little reason to love the Cavalier squirarchy of the Tidewater or lowland slaveowners. So there's always a dichotomy in anti-Yankee rants like the one that set off this discussion. They begin with the backcountry's antipathy towards the haughty, egotistical, smug, Northerners and Easterners, but often end in a really contemptuous looking down one's nose at Yankee upstarts. That's because the cavalier-highlander opposition squints through the North-South one. Secede and the South has its own inborn sectional-ethnic-class conflict waiting for the next generation of propagandists.
The same tension between high and low is also visible in the New England Tradition. For generations, the Highlanders of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire had little love lost for Boston's wealthy Unitarians, though both voted heavily Republican. What's happened in New England since 1960 has been as much the end of old New England as any continuing evolution of the Yankee ethos. Except for the occasional Weld or Jeffords the voice of New England in today's politics is anything but "Yankee" in the sense of Anglo-Saxon Protestant, let alone Puritan: Kennedy, Leahy, Dodd, Kerry (O.K. Kerry's half Yankee, but all the more a deviant for his mixed origins).
But if you are looking for that Puritan spirit that inspired generations of Englanders and New Englanders, you'll find something of it in the evangelicals of the South, and much of it in the Mormons of Utah, where the cousins of New England and New York Yankees and Minnesota Scandinavians pursue a very different politics from those who stayed East.
The same sort of long-standing oppositions are also visible in other parts of the world. Englishmen and Frenchmen, Frenchmen and Germans will never be mistaken for one another. But the Frenchman of 1814 or 1840 was warlike and bullying. The German of those years was sweet-tempered, ineffectual and devoted to philosophy and music. A century later in 1914 or 1940 the countries had switched characters. The Englishman of 1870 or 1880 could look down on the Frenchman who still hadn't come to grips with modernity and the political, technological and economic problems of the day. Many a Frenchman in 1970 or 1980 looked down on his English contemporary for exactly the same reason. The wise Englishman, Frenchman or German understands how things change even as they stay the same. It's the fools who promoted wars on the basis of immutable national characters.
Rather than keep promoting sectional conflict and animosities, we might recognize that at different times different regions or classes or groups might promote or attack liberty, act responsibly or irresponsibly and help or hurt the republic. Surely it takes more energy to go on fighting what one takes to be a hundred, or two hundred or four hundred years' war than to work with people from different regions in the present day.
But there is something of a quirky revenge in this revival of confederatism. For a generation, people have told libertarians not to be so narrow, dogmatic, ideological or rationalistic, and to respect institutions and traditions more. Now some of them are far less dogmatic, ideological and rationalistic about libertarianism, and have come to respect a tradition, though the one they've latched on to is surprising, and far from libertarian in the end.
The South from which I was spawned...Mississippi...is aside from the coast...almost all Scots/Irish and English. The geneology behind class distinctions amongst whites has been diluted markedly since antebellum days. In those days from what I've read, the gentry would have no doubt been lacking roundheads, yet the transplanted Scots hence Irish who came here in droves in Cromwell's aftermath would appear to have let their resentment of Yankee do-goodery overide lingering hostility to the Restorers . One could even today draw similar observations. Good thing too...at least for these threads on this forum. LOL