That Kansas north/south accent thing is almost sure to go back to the Kansas War, before the Civil War. The election (plebiscite?) was going to come up as to whether Kansas was to be all slave or all free, and both sections of the country were trying to pack the ballot box, as it were. Large numbers of slavery advocates moved in, even though many of them might not intend to stay permanently, and so did lots of abolitionists.

Then there started raids and murders, trying to either drive out or kill whoever was on the opposite side of the conflict. John Brown and his sons were on the abolitionist side, and Quantrell the raider (with Jesse James in his crew, I understand) on the pro-slavery side.

Even after the active violent phase was over and so was the status of the state, the respective populations (not surprisingly) carried the grudge, and tended to remain apart, and maintained the folkways of their origins.

Dave Oesterreich