Albion's rotten seed was never unified as one. Seeing the civil war as some unique historical genesis of the split-- instead of a national shotgun-wedding of sorts is completely backwards.
It wasn't much of a shotgun wedding. Yes, it was a common enemy/cause during the revolution, but then took years of debate for the constitution and years more for the bill of rights. Over time, we've forced more and more homogeneous (federal) laws. The more laws you pass, the more likely people are affected in the outgroups under the splits you mentioned and it compounds. All the concerns about states rights and small states being less powerful are still concerns for some groups of people today. We've essentially been eroding the initial status quo that had been agreed upon.
Personally I think calling it a shotgun wedding is one of my best metaphors of the week and perfectly evokes what I was going for. Contemporaries from like Lincoln's 2nd inaugural of course would call it finer things, like a national baptism etc. but shotgun wedding captures the borderer element, too. I like it and stand by it.
