The Southern States is a large region in the southeastern United
States. In the agricultural southern states, where cotton cultivation
played an important economic role, slavery was practiced until the
1860s, while it was abolished in 1804 in what was then the northern
states. When Abraham Lincoln, who advocated banning new slave-owning
states, won the presidential election in 1860, the southern states broke
away from the Union (secession) and formed the Confederate States. This
sparked the American Civil War. It ended with the victory of the
northern states.
Subsequently, the US Congress ordered a
reconstruction of politics and society in the southern states, which
lasted 14 years. Former Confederate supporters (which affected almost
all Southerners) were temporarily disenfranchised and barred from
political office. Military governors were installed. With them often
came entrepreneurs and soldiers of fortune from the north, so-called
carpetbaggers, who, in view of the removal of thousands of previous
officials from their positions in many places, quickly rose to the ranks
and thus profited from the defeat in the south. This was perceived by
many Southerners as foreign control by the North. As a result, many
Southerners felt, in some cases to this day, a sense of separate
identity and distrust of anything that came from the North.
Another name for the southern states is Dixieland or Dixie. Where this
came from is not entirely clear. Possibly from the French inscription
dix on the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana ten-dollar bills circulating
south, or from the Mason-Dixon line dividing northern from southern
states.
The southern states largely coincide with the American
Bible Belt, a region whose population is considered to be particularly
religious and is characterized in particular by evangelical Protestants
who represent socio-politically conservative positions.
The South is filled with historic sites, from colonial settlements to
Civil War battlefields to Civil Rights landmarks. Visit historic
Jamestown in Virginia to explore the first successful British settlement
in North America (1607). Also consider a visit to nearby Colonial
Williamsburg, which offers a picturesque recap of life in a Colonial
village, with 500 restored and rebuilt period buildings. From here we
recommend continuing to Yorktown, where Lord Cornwallis surrendered to
General George Washington in 1781, thus ending the fighting of the
American Revolution.
Many Southern cities from the late colonial
or early Republican period retain their original charm. Interesting
among them are Charleston and Beaufort in South Carolina, Savannah in
Georgia, and the French Quarter of New Orleans in Louisiana. Many
smaller towns boast historic neoclassical and Victorian districts, and
many old boulevards in the Deep South are lined with ancient oak trees
covered in Spanish moss. In the spring, summer, and fall, prewar
plantations and famous presidential estates, such as George Washington's
Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and Andrew Jackson's
Hermitage, are popular attractions. The second-oldest university in the
state, the College of William and Mary (1693), is tucked away in the
heart of Virginia's Colonial Historic District. Several of the oldest
public universities in the United States are located in the South,
including The University of Georgia (1785), The University of North
Carolina (1789), The University of South Carolina (1801), and The
University of Virginia (1819 ), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The
American Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in US history, and it has
in many cases scarred the South to this day. Battles have taken place
throughout the southern states, and many of the major battle sites are
preserved by the National Park Service, including Manassas (Bull Run),
Fredericksburg, and Appomattox in Virginia; Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing)
in Tennessee; Chattanooga Tennessee; Chickamauga in Georgia; and
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Many wartime forts are still in good condition,
and are open to the public. These include Fort Sumter near Charleston,
Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines near Mobile,
Ala.
Many of the most visible cornerstones of the
African-American Civil Rights movement are found in the South, including
Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas; the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church, 16th Street Baptist Church, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Alabama; the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Georgia. Several interpretive
centers have been created to chronicle the struggle for equality, such
as the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, and the Martin
Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia.
Other
historic sites in the region include the Wright Brothers National
Memorial in North Carolina, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee,
and NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Alabama.
The region also known as The South includes roughly those states that
broke away from the United States in 1861, causing the American Civil
War. Upset by growing resentment against slavery, ten to thirteen
breakaway slave states formed the Confederate States of America after
the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Three of the border states
had episodes of Civil War at home; each of these had two organizations,
one Unionist and one Confederate, and both claimed to govern the state.
The result was a bloody five-year conflict, which left the nation
bruised and bruised, but ultimately led to the preservation of the
nation as a single unit, and the abolition of slavery. Since most of the
battles occurred on Southern soil, the war resulted in the devastation
of the South.
The South had been around for more than two hundred
years before the Civil War began. The first settlement was on Roanoke
Island in 1585, and the first permanent colony was at Jamestown in 1607.
Many of the early settlers of the South were indentured servants, and
later slaves. Many battles of the Revolution were fought in the South,
including the Battle of Yorktown which ended the war. In 1800 the
Southern economy was centered on growing tobacco (in Virginia,
Tennessee, and the Carolinas) and cotton (elsewhere) as "immediate
income crops", and did not industrialize as the North did in the early
nineteenth century . At the time of the Civil War, one in three citizens
was a slave. The rest were mostly poor farmers, who owned no slaves,
while a few owned large tracts of land and many slaves.
Texas and
Florida also broke away from the union, but are now considered separate
regions. Kentucky is considered part of the South, despite never
seceding from the union, but allowing slavery. West Virginia consisted
of 50 Virginia counties that rejected the state's secession act and were
admitted to the union in 1863. Maryland and Delaware also allowed
slavery but did not break away, and are now considered part of the
mid-Atlantic coastal region, while Missouri, another non-secessionist
slave state, is part of the Midwest.
After the Civil War the
people of the South had to struggle to face defeat. Even though Southern
blacks were "free," they remained second-class citizens. They were often
denied the vote, and many were forced to work the land as sharecroppers.
Segregation laws (called "Jim Crow") in the South were rampant. Many
Southern whites fought against black freedom and equality well into the
twentieth century. Some formed a group called the Ku Klux Klan, which
terrorized blacks and immigrants.
While the subsequent 150 years
have done much to heal wounds, the Civil War is still seen as a pivotal
event for the South. Battle reenactments are performed throughout the
region, and period reenactment is a popular hobby. While Confederate
battle flags (rebel flags) can be found in many southern settlements,
visitors should understand that outside of historical context, the flag
is seen by many as a symbol of hatred and/or treason. Except for
[Mississippi]], all southern states have removed the battle flag from
their heraldry.
Indeed, the South is more of a cultural region
than a geographical one; states west of Texas are not considered part of
The South, no matter how far south they are.
By plane
The largest airport in the South is also the largest in
the world: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (IATA: ATL).
Other major airports include Douglas International in Charlotte,
Reagan National and Dulles International in Virginia just outside
Washington, Memphis International, Durham International in Raleigh,
Nashville International, and Louis Armstrong International in New
Orleans.
The other airports in the South mostly have flights to
and from Atlanta, and many have flights from Dallas, Houston, Miami or
Washington.
By car
The coast is well served by the East Coast
Expressway I-95, which crosses Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia,
connecting the two megacities Boston and Washington to the northeast
with Florida to the south. I-20 reaches the Gulf Coast states through
Birmingham, Jackson, and Atlanta to Dallas to the west and I-95 to the
east. I-65 is the main north-south thoroughfare that passes through the
center of the region, starting in Mobile and passing through Birmingham,
Nashville, and Louisville until it almost reaches Chicago. I-55 runs
parallel to the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Chicago through
Memphis and Jackson. I-10 enters the South from Texas, arriving in New
Orleans and Mobile. I-75 originates in Detroit and Cincinnati, and
extends to Knoxville, Atlanta and Tampa. The South is also connected to
the other regions thanks to the state and federal road and highway
system.
By bus
There are many affordable Chinatown bus lines
that travel from New York City as far south as the Atlantic coast to the
Carolines. Greyhounds from New York along the North Atlantic are
affordable, and departures are frequent. The stretch to and from the
Appalachian Mountains is less busy, and Greyhound Bus has a monopoly on
bus rides in this area. Greyhound trips to less populated states can be
quite expensive; operating costs per passenger are higher, due to low
passenger volumes, and Greyhound exploits its monopoly position. Road
routes in the area generally follow the same vertical rather than
horizontal corridor, and the bus is no exception, so several transfers
may be required. For example, to get to Kentucky, a Greyhound bus would
go from New York to Philadelphia, PA, to Pittsburgh, PA, to Columbus,
OH, to Cincinnati, OH, and so on south. The same path will have to be
followed to arrive, for example, in Tennessee.
Greyhound buses
are cheaper when booked months in advance. A single ticket booked a
month in advance from New York to Memphis can cost as much as $140. If
possible, it's best to avoid depending on Greyhound for large numbers of
consecutive trips between individual Southern cities, as bus travel
between Southern cities is prohibitively expensive compared to cities on
the Atlantic or Pacific. (Traveling from Lexington, KY to Louisville,
KY, which is about an hour away, will cost about $50).
Freeway travel is arguably the cheapest way to get around the South.
Interstate expressways cover nearly the entire region, connecting all
major cities. Of course you can travel from one city to another by
plane, but in most cases it is significantly more expensive than by car.
There would also be the option of traveling by train, but rail travel is
limited, quite expensive, and considerably slower than air travel.
One cannot rely heavily on public transport in most Southern cities,
as, with some exceptions, motor traffic is preferred in this region. As
a result getting around beyond the city center is often difficult
without a car. In any case it is always better to inquire before
arriving.
In Southern cuisine, a meat and three is a restaurant where the customer selects one meat from a daily choice of three to six dishes (such as roast chicken, country ham, beef, steak, meatloaf, or pork chop) and three sides from a list, which can contain up to a dozen choices (usually vegetables, potatoes, corn, green or lima beans, but also other dishes like creamed corn, macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti). This is often served with cornbread and sweet tea. The dish's roots can be traced back to Nashville, Tennessee.
One of the main peculiarities of the cultural South is the dialect
spoken by the population. Indigenous people from the East Coast of
Maryland to northern Florida and as far west as Texas speak with an
easily discernible accent that is different from that of the rest of the
United States. The accent is described as "drawing" with a sharp note.
Visitors may notice that there are local variations in Southern
accents and dialects. In general, the local accent or dialect changes as
soon as one changes geographical area (e.g. mountain people speak a
different dialect than that of coastal inhabitants. Furthermore,
generally speaking, accents tend to be more marked in rural areas. While
Americans refer to only one “Southern” dialect, in fact there are a
variety.Visitors (especially non-English speakers by birth) may have
trouble understanding thicker accents or local terminology.
The
pronoun "y'all" (a contraction of "you all") is a well-known feature of
the Southern dialect. While it is often ridiculed in popular culture, it
is quite useful in colloquial speech: it represents the second person
plural (equivalent to " vosotros" in Spanish, "vous" in French, or "ihr"
in German). It is often used in casual conversation, but is avoided in
formal speech. Although the term is often heard, it is best to be
careful when using it when visiting the area, as it might seem like a
form of condescension towards the local population.
It's
generally considered rude to joke about the dialect unless you're from
the area. The local population suspects that those from other regions
regard them as dull, and the drawl is sometimes held to be a symbol of
this. In general, natives are very proud of their accent, and appreciate
it when spoken of in a positive sense.
Important geographical features are (from east to west) the Atlantic
coast, the Appalachian mountain range, the Mississippi River and the
vast landscapes of Texas.
Most southern states have a humid
subtropical climate. The soils are mostly fertile and the safe
frost-free period is more than six months. Typical plants in the area
are live oaks, magnolias, dogwood and incense pine.
Around the year 800, stratified societies developed for the first
time in the area, profiting from an economic surplus. The Mississippi
culture is particularly notable. The Indians cultivated agriculture
(mainly corn) and began to settle in cities. The largest city of the
Mississippi culture, Cahokia, located near the confluence of the
Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, had around 20,000 inhabitants in the
12th century. The extent to which this development was influenced by the
Indians of Central America has not yet been fully researched.
Around the 13th century, however, the cultures began to decline. The
population decreased, cities were abandoned. Hernando de Soto's
expedition in the 16th century found many places that had obviously been
abandoned for a long time, and the exchange between tribes and cultures
was only a faint reflection of what can be seen from archaeological
finds from earlier times.
The inhabitants of the area belonged to
the language families of the Sioux (Quapaw, Biloxi), Algonquian language
family (Pamunkey, Shawnee), Iroquoian languages (Cherokee, Tuscarora,
Westos), Caddo (Hasinai, Kadohadacho, Natchitoches), Gulf languages
(Atakapa, Chitimacha, Natchez, Tunica) and Timucuan (Apalachee,
Choctaw, Oristas, Cusabos, Chickasaw, Guales, Alabama, Muskogee).
The first Spanish expeditions were carried out in 1527/28 by Pánfilo
de Narváez and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and in 1539/40 by Hernando de
Soto, who penetrated far into the interior of the country. Although it
is still historically disputed, the decline of the Mississippian culture
began long before the Spanish expeditions, but they dealt the natives
another serious blow with their weapons and, above all, the diseases
they introduced.
In 1585, Walter Raleigh founded the first
English settlement on what is now the USA. It was founded on Roanoke
Island (North Carolina), but was not permanent. It was not until 1607
that the English succeeded in founding the first permanent settlement,
Jamestown, in Virginia. Like New England, the South was initially
settled by English Protestants. Later, other religious communities
joined.
In 1776, six of the 13 founding states of the USA were slave-holding
southern states: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Georgia. Kentucky in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, Louisiana in
1812, Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819 were also admitted to the
Union as slave states. Missouri, which joined the Union in 1821,
Arkansas, which joined the Union in 1836, and Florida and Texas since
1845 were also considered southern states. All of these states permitted
slavery.
In elections for the American president and the House of
Representatives, the number of electors or representatives sent by a
state depends on its population. It was therefore an important
controversial issue whether the slaves, who lived mainly in the South,
should be counted in the calculation. In the Great Compromise of 1787,
which clarified such and similar questions, it was decided that
three-fifths of the slaves should be counted. This rule lost its
significance after the abolition of slavery in 1865. Ironically, the
southern states therefore received more representatives than before,
although the former slaves did not necessarily become voting citizens.
Between the 1790s, with the invention of the egrenier machine by Eli
Whitney, and the American Civil War, cotton became the primary
agricultural commodity. During this period, it played a key role in
supplying the British textile industry. Several million hectares of
former wilderness were developed; the process was accompanied by
intensive modernization. The same number of workers who could work one
hectare of cotton in 1800 worked twelve hectares in 1850, supplemented
by corn fields and other crops for self-sufficiency. The development of
the paddle steamer, as well as the spread of the railway for transport
and the introduction of the telegraph, occurred in this period.
While people in most of the southern states were still self-sufficient
in 1800, by 1860 there were intensive trade relations with the northern
states and almost all consumer goods and machines were imported. The
center of the cotton industry was the state of Mississippi, and in
particular the southern area of Vicksburg along the Mississippi River
with the urban center of Natchez.
The slaves in the southern states were born there as slaves or came
to the country through the Atlantic slave trade until the import of
slaves into the USA was banned in 1808.
Slave labor on the
tobacco and cotton farms and plantations in the southern states differed
from the previously established slave labor on the Caribbean sugar cane
plantations. Tobacco and cotton cultivation was less labor-intensive
than sugar cane cultivation - the slave owners could afford to own about
half of the women. They supported the founding of families, as this not
only provided (financial) offspring, but also prevented possible
uprisings, as those potentially involved had much more to lose than in
the Caribbean. In addition, uprisings were less common in the southern
states than in the Caribbean, as slave uprisings were nipped in the bud
by a well-organized militia. Furthermore, the proportion of slaves in
the total population was much smaller than, for example, on the British
island of Jamaica, where whites only made up a very small colonial upper
class.
Slave labor was performed either according to the gang
system or the task system. In the gang system, slaves worked all day
under a (usually enslaved) overseer; in the task system, they were given
a specific task and were given time off if they completed it before the
allotted time.
In addition to the majority of slaves who worked
on plantations and farms, there were also house slaves and skilled
workers. The latter were often rented out to craftsmen in nearby towns
when there was no work on the farm, which generally allowed these slaves
to live a little more freely. The chances of being officially freed were
slim. Traditionally, owners had the right to release their slaves, but
they usually only applied this to their own (unrecognized) children with
female house slaves. In the last years before secession, fears began to
grow that freedmen would incite the slaves to unrest, and the right to
release was sometimes shifted solely to the governor of the individual
states.
Of course, slaves also tried to escape. With the help of
sympathizers and abolitionists, this was achieved, for example, through
the Underground Railroad. While uprisings were rare, sabotage was more
common. The skilled slaves in particular had both the technical
understanding and the ability to cause great damage to their owners'
machines without their own actions becoming obvious.
The abolitionist movement gave the impression of a strong lobby
group, although it had less power than the South feared. Although the
Northerners were against slavery on principle, they were also against a
rapid abolition in the South. They feared not only chaos and massacres
in the South itself, but also mass migration of freed slaves to the
North. However, measures taken by the Southern states to hinder
abolitionist propaganda in the South also displeased Northerners, who
saw press freedom as being at risk.
One issue was whether a slave
who had fled to the North should continue to be considered the property
of his owner living in the South. A slave flight law of 1850 caused
unrest, as slave owners captured their slaves in the North or black
people whom they described as runaway slaves. The burden of proof that
they were not slaves lay with the person concerned. Overall, there were
relatively few cases, but there were bloody conflicts between slave
owners and slaves and those who supported them. The civil war-like
conditions in Kansas were also bloody. There, slavery supporters sought
to gain power in the territory through manipulation and to have Kansas
join the USA as a slave-holding state.
In 1857, the Supreme Court
ruled that a runaway slave should not be granted citizenship by staying
in a northern state. After all, the constitutionally guaranteed property
of slave owners must be protected. Opponents of slavery feared that
slavery would be extended to the north in the future. If property rights
continued to apply in the north, for example if a southerner could visit
a northern state with his slaves, then ultimately a stay for longer or
forever would be permitted.
Another major point of contention
between northern and southern states was the question of whether slavery
should be introduced in the newly acquired territories of the west.
Northerners feared that if it were introduced, they would become a
minority within the Union. For example, in 1820 the Missouri Compromise
was reached, according to which slavery could only be introduced south
of a certain line. In the long term, however, the southern states fell
behind because only a few newly admitted states allowed slavery. This
was not least due to climatic reasons, since slave-based agriculture in
the north was not profitable and there was no need for slaves. Trade
regulations that made it difficult for the south to import processed
goods from countries other than the northern states were also
controversial.
The southern states' justified fear was that they
would lose influence in the state as a whole and ultimately would not be
able to maintain their way of doing business. Since practically all
immigrants to the USA settled in slave-free states, the proportion of
the southern population in the state as a whole fell: by 1830 it was 42
percent, by 1850 only 35 percent (and in relation to whites only 23
percent).
By 1860 only candidates supported by the south had
become president of the United States. However, that year Abraham
Lincoln was elected, whose new Republican Party was based primarily in
the North. Personally, he was in favor of abolishing slavery; however,
he respected the legal situation that left the slavery issue to the
states. Only a constitutional amendment with a two-thirds majority could
have abolished slavery throughout the United States.
Despite Lincoln's election, the southern states could have remained
in the Union and continued to allow slavery. However, fearing future
developments, some of the slave-holding states decided to secede from
the Union and form their own state.
South Carolina declared its
secession from the Union in December 1860, before the newly elected
president took office in March. The incumbent president, James Buchanan,
believed that this secession was illegal, but that there was no legal
basis for using force to prevent it; he therefore remained inactive,
although Lincoln called on him to act.
South Carolina's secession
was followed in January 1861 by the states of Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. On February 4, 1861, a Provisional
Congress was formed in Montgomery, consisting of representatives from
these states, which founded the Confederate States of America (CSA) and
adopted their own constitution on March 11. Texas, whose declaration of
secession, passed at a convention in Austin on February 1, 1861, was
approved by referendum on February 23 and thus came into effect on March
2,[2] was the last state to secede from the Union and join the
Confederate States before Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4 and the
beginning of the Civil War.
A turning point was the attack on
Fort Sumter on April 12 and 13, 1861. The fortress in South Carolina
territory was under federal administration and was captured by South
Carolina. This marked the beginning of the actual Civil War, and now
Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee also seceded from the
Union. After the populous Virginia joined the Confederacy, Richmond, the
capital of Virginia, replaced Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, as the
capital of the Confederacy.
The dates of the withdrawal from the
Union at a glance:
South Carolina: December 20, 1860
Mississippi:
January 9, 1861
Florida: January 10, 1861
Alabama: January 11,
1861
Georgia: January 19, 1861
Louisiana: January 26, 1861
Texas: February 23, 1861
Virginia: April 17, 1861
Arkansas: May 6,
1861
Tennessee: May 6, 1861
North Carolina: May 20, 1861
Of the
slave-holding states, only Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Delaware
remained in the Union, although only the permanent stay of the latter
was considered certain. In 1863, the new state of West Virginia split
off from Virginia and joined the Union.
During the war, large
parts of the southern states were devastated by northern troops, and the
South suffered from a trade blockade controlled by northern naval
forces. In addition, the South initially damaged itself by imposing an
embargo on cotton, in false confidence in its own economic importance.
Cotton warehouses in Europe, on the other hand, were full after several
warnings of war, and the textile industry there was experiencing a sales
crisis.
European states such as Great Britain and France were
certainly interested in splitting the Union, but initially did not dare
to enter into open conflict with the northern states. With the
Emancipation Proclamation, with which the northern states declared
slavery abolished, they gained sympathy in England, where there was
already a strong anti-slavery movement. In England, intervention in
favor of slave owners could not be implemented domestically. Without
England, France was also not prepared to get involved.
Due to the
industrial strength of the far more populous North, the South could not
hold its own against it in the long term, but large parts of the officer
corps of the federal army were Southerners and the Southern troops
fought more committedly. On April 9, 1865, Southern General Robert
Edward Lee surrendered. The last Confederate troops surrendered on June
23, 1865 in Texas.
On April 15, 1865, in the final phase of the war, Lincoln was
assassinated while attending a theater in Washington. Shortly before, on
January 31, 1865, slavery had been finally abolished throughout the
United States by the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Lincoln's successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869), a
Southerner from Tennessee and Democrat, tried to win the people of the
Southern states back to the federal government by treating them more
leniently. Congress, on the other hand, feared that the old conditions
in the South would continue almost unchanged. Therefore, the Southern
states were only allowed to send members to Congress again after
significant legislative reforms. At times, the Southern states were even
governed by representatives of the federal government (so-called
carpetbaggers). The end of this Reconstruction period is located in
1877, when the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president and
he withdrew the last Union troops.
Nevertheless, African
Americans in the southern states remained second-class citizens, whose
participation in elections was made considerably more difficult by
discriminatory measures. Racial segregation remained in its basic form
until the 1960s, until the civil rights movement and the corresponding
measures of the federal government under Lyndon B. Johnson. In addition,
millions of blacks moved to the northern and western states between 1940
and 1970, while whites moved to the South.
In political terms, the Civil War led to a rarely interrupted rule by
the Republican Party at the federal level, which was only broken in 1932
by the New Deal Coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. This ushered in a
phase of Democratic federal governments until the 1960s, only
interrupted by the Eisenhower administration. In the South, however, the
Democrats set the tone; for example, in Texas they were governors from
1874 to 1979.
In and after the 1960s there was a realignment of
voters and parties. While up until then the Democrats, as former slave
advocates and a strongly conservative force, had dominated the southern
states almost unchallenged (Solid South), many whites now switched to
the Republicans, who had already replaced the Democrats as the more
conservative party at the turn of the century. The policy of the
Democratic presidents Kennedy and Johnson to abolish racial segregation
was one reason for this. This also explains the phenomenon that many
whites in the South vote Democratic at the state level, but Republican
at the federal level.
The influx of Americans from the northern
states to the economically strong South meant that the southern states
became more populous and thus gained more weight at the federal level.
On the other hand, the social composition and voting behavior in these
states also changed, which was further reinforced by immigrants from
Latin America, the Hispanics.
In the 19th century, all southern states had a strong agricultural
focus - in contrast to the already largely industrialized north.
Plantation farming was particularly widespread in the coastal plains. As
a result, these states had the peculiar institution, the "special
institution", as slavery was also called. There were significant
economic differences between the plantation owners in the plains and the
small farmers in the mountainous regions of the Appalachians. This led
to the "secession within the secession" during the Civil War, the
secession of West Virginia from Virginia and the attempted secession of
East Tennessee from Tennessee.
The socio-cultural differences
between the north and the south run through all social classes and
parties and have shaped politics between the individual states and the
federal government since the reconstruction phase. The white inhabitants
of the southern states, who come from poorer sections of the population,
are sometimes disparagingly referred to as rednecks. Some people in the
South or those who come from there also speak a characteristic accent,
the Southern Drawl.
The Southern states comprise the so-called
Bible Belt. This area is known for the intensive practice of the
Christian religion; it is not uncommon to find dozens of churches even
in small towns. Religious groups such as the Baptists also sometimes
have their own Southern associations.
Gospel, blues and country
music originated in the Southern states. New Orleans was and is an
important center for blues and jazz, Memphis one for blues and soul.
Nashville (Tennessee) is the center of commercial country music. The
first recording in Memphis by Elvis Presley, a native of Mississippi, is
often cited as the "birth" of rock 'n' roll. Dixieland jazz, the Dirty
South and Southern rock are named directly after the Southern states.
Southern cuisine and its special features such as Cajun food, soul
food, Tex-Mex cuisine and Creole cuisine are also well known.
A common synonym for the southern states is Dixieland or Dixie. According to one theory, the name is derived from the Mason-Dixon line. This was the name given to the border line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had surveyed, and more generally also to the dividing line between the American states south of which slavery was permitted and north of which it was prohibited. According to another theory, the name is derived from the French word "dix" (ten), which used to be found on ten-dollar bills produced by the state printing works in what was at times a French-speaking New Orleans.