When Robert Lee sat down to sign the peace accord after the Civil War he, according to those who were there, referred to the North as the United States, showing that even in defeat he thought of America as two separate countries. It was a painful expression of a political view point still warmly held today. I used to wonder greatly at the way in which the USA was split until I learned that civil war veterans were still marching in the 1930s, and I realized that for most people growing up in the USA the civil war and the wrongs done in the rebuilding of the South with the carpet-baggers, were in the memories of their grandfathers.
This without even beginning to look at the bigotry which is still current as a major stream of American thoughts and practice.
People can pass on their grievances for generations and the fractures which created the civil war in America have not been healed by the fact that if the South had split, America would not have supported the UK in WW2 as the natural friends of the South would have been through South Africa, the Germans. The face of the world would have been very different for all of us and far worse than it is today.
But Southerners who support the Tea Party do not see that history, they see through their grandfathers’ eyes not their own.