I know I'm not so far north and/or west as the folks you mentioned, but northwest enough that I don't live in an area with any Civil War history attached to it. My mom and her family grew up in Oklahoma, and I have a lot of ancestors from the South. I grew up at least hearing about that era a lot, and I've always been interested in it.
I don't think it ever could hold the same meaning for me as it does for you or others who are literally surrounded by memorials and battle sites and museums and just the Southern life in general. But for me, there's definitely a fascination with it all, a certain sentimental feeling about it. There's a tragic romance about it, for me. I'm sure a part of that is due to having watched/read Gone With the Wind (though reading it is such an entirely different experience than watching the film- the film is good, but the book is excellent and far more detailed about the war itself rather than Scarlett's screwed up love life). Another good book is The Widow of the South (which reminds me I should read that again). Anyway, my point is, my view of the Civil War is probably skewed, and I admit I don't know a whole lot about it, but it's definitely interesting and important to me.
When I was 17, I went on vacation with my mom, aunt, and grandma- we drove from here to Georgia and South Carolina and visited some of the old plantations and cemeteries and Fort Sumter and...I dunno, a heck of a lot of places connected to that time period and the war. It was a really amazing opportunity, I recognized that even as a teenager, and I'd love to go back and have more time to just see everything. To me, everything east and south of Kansas is like a fairy tale world...the land itself, the veil of green on everything, the history, the homes...I'm in love with it. There's just something awe-inspiring about standing in a place where men fought and died for what they believed in, something tragic about seeing slave cabins all lined up out of sight of the mansion on a plantation, something mystical about being surrounded by giant oaks and magnolias draped with Spanish moss and imagining a farewell scene between a soldier and a Southern belle in her hoopskirts (that might be Gone With the Wind getting to me again...).
Um...so...short answer: Yes, it holds meaning to some people over this way.