AH Challenge: Progressive South, Conservative North...

In colonial times, and early in U.S. history, the Northern United States, particularly New England, was known for reactionary morality and religiosity. In contrast, the South, prior to the Second Great Awakening, had a reputation as being a fairly irreligious part of the U.S. - most people had marginal attachment to religion and baptism was fairly rare.

In OTL, the roles of the two regions slowly reversed, with the South becoming the religious, reactionary part of the country, and the North becoming the more secular and progressive region. Could this shift have been forestalled? How could we get a U.S. today where the South is known for low support for fundamentalist Christianity, a live-and-let-live morality, and perhaps broad support for progressive economics. Conversely, how could we retain New England in particular as the most religiously devoted and uptight region in the U.S.?
 
Prevent the second Great Awakening, or at least have it not follow up in the South, and you'll probably get your desired result.

It'd be helped if alcoholism was more of a Northern thing than a general nationwide issue; part of the reason of the SGA's spread and success across the whole country was its vocal attempt to address social ills like alcoholism and slavery. Limit the necessity of the SGA's social crusades, and you'll limit the main factor that made the switch.
 
As a liberal southerner, I sure wish this could have happened.

To make it work though, you'd have to prevent the civil war from happening. After the war ended, southern culture became consumed with the extremely nostalgic and backward-looking myth of the Lost Cause, which portrayed the civil war as an older, chivalrous nation of landowning gentlemen, fighting a rightious, but doomed struggle against the faceless, industrial culture of the North (watch Gone with the Wind, and carefully read the several-paragraph "introduction" that comes up just before the movie starts). This thinking was popular into the 20th century and fed into the conservative political culture that is dominant in the South today (Southern democrats were always cultural reactionaries-to put it mildly-whatever their economic beliefs. When the Democratic party definitively rejected that line of thinking, they basically switched to the party that was more accomidating to their belief system).
 
Top