With the industrial revolution came the production of new industrialized goods such as cars. One of the things that changed was transportation. Things moved a lot faster around the country. Pollution levels also increased due to cars and factories.
The coalition of former Whigs, African Americans, newcomers from the North and a few former Democrats composed the Republican in the South. Republican policies in the South emphasized modernizing and democratizing southern institutions which gathers support from many small southern farmers because they didn't have much economic opportunity in the old South.
Answer:
The regular workers was prospering the extent that residents were concerned.
Likewise with any modern insurgency, it was the same in the United States of America, a country that was prospering at the times and firmly building up, that there would be another class of specialists who needed to do the modest assignments noone else needed to do yet were required to be done on the off chance that they needed to have an effective industrializaiton of their nation.
Therefore the appropriate response is the average workers.
It was reasonably justified because they believed that it worked and as they were religious they believed that what they did actually worked and appeased the gods. The human sacrifices actually did it voluntarily, although probably not all, since they believed that it was their duty. This was not unlike numerous other places throughout history where human sacrifice to gods was a common thing and done all the time. They didn't know any better and actually believed it to be true.