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Glad I helped a little with Richardson.
The Lincolnite author whose name now escapes me, goes into detail trying to figure out what the defining difference between Unionists and Confederates in K'ville was, as many shared simliar class and economic backgrounds. As with other works I've read the bottom line seemed to have been, as you suggest, what your past political party affiliation was: Whig or Democrat, the Whigs being more Unionist. So it could fall back on a religious/cultural difference as Whigs normally came from puritan backgrounds (Congregational or Presbyterian--read: ministers were university educated), were more probusiness, and had a streak of puritan moralizing. There is also the split that Whigs were the members of the aspiring, educated middle classes; while the Dems were the poorer farmers, workers, immigrants, that is, the Whigs were the classic "insiders" while the Dems were the "outsiders." Also the Whigs would have been schooled in the Henry Clay "Union Forever" tradition as was Lincoln. But within that context, old political grudges might have never healed.
RE: coercion. As I write in my Anna Ella Carroll bio Great Necessities, although over the years, many had viewed the North/South and slavery split in many different ways, with different degrees of intensity, when push came to shove and it came time to make a decision to secede in the remaining 4 Border states: AR, VA, TN and NC, after Sumter, the decision was largely made on the basis of "coercion", which shows how a single event can drive larger ones. And it's somewhat amusing to think that since the Federal govt. had such a small presence in the nation and the South as a whole, secession hinged on collecting customs and the mail and holding a fort.
Kay