Yes and no

There had been a cultural mentality among the elite that ‘slavery was the backbone of their way of life and a moral gift to those enslaved’, but that didn’t extend to the non-elites till after wartime propaganda convinced the poor white men to adopt the same mentality. Up till that poing there was a staggering lack of racism between poor people of any race, and part of what motivated ‘the south’ was breaking that ‘poor vs rich’ mentality

So while the culture of the elites had always been racist, it wasn’t the case for the common man till the war was well underway.