Southern nationalism was swelling and pride supported the new founding. Confederate nationalism prepared men to fight for "the Cause". For the duration of its existence, the Confederacy underwent trial by war. The "Southern Cause" transcended the ideology of states' rights, tariff policy, and internal improvements. This "Cause" supported, or derived from, cultural and financial dependence on the South's slavery-based economy. The convergence of race and slavery, politics, and economics raised almost all South-related policy questions to the status of moral questions over way of life, commingling love of things Southern and hatred of things Northern. Not only did national political parties split, but national churches and interstate families as well divided along sectional lines as the war approached. According to historian John M. Coski,