'''The South''' is usually identified as includes the eleven states that made up the [[Confederate States of America]] which consisted of [[South Carolina]], [[Mississippi]], [[Florida]], [[Alabama]], [[Georgia]], [[Louisiana]], [[Texas]], [[Virginia]], [[Arkansas]], [[Tennessee]] and [[North Carolina]]. The South is currently defined by the US Census as these states, as well as [[Delaware]], [[Maryland]], [[West Virginia]], [[Kentucky]], and [[Oklahoma]]. <ref>http://www.census.gov/geo/www/us_regdiv.pdf</ref> '''The ''Deep South'' consists of the states most "southern" ''in culture'': South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Georgia and Louisiana'''.
==History==
The '''Ante-Bellum South''' comprised the slave states before the American Civil War started in 1861; all the northern states had abolished slavery. The social history is considered in terms of large plantations with more than 20 slaves that grew cotton and other crops for export, and the "plain folk", who owned few or no slaves.
===18th century===
==Plantation Historiography==
[[File:Cotton1820-60.jpg|thumb|380px]]Anderson (2005) shows that after the Civil War a wave of nostalgia created an image of the plantation South that endured for a century, most notably typified in the novel and movie, "[[Gone with the Wind]]" (1936, 1939). Memoirs and fiction by former white plantation residents indicate "that nostalgia occurs most forcibly after a profound split in remembered events and experiences." These literary strategies "reveal a potent change in elite white southern consciousness after the Civil War." By 1900, plantation reminiscences that described the Old South as a place of wealth, self-sufficiency, honor, hospitality, and happy master-slave relationships had gained regional, national, and international popularity. The nostalgic memories of Southerners helped them triumph over defeat and create a sense of continuity with the splintered past.
Serious scholarship began in 1900 with [[Ulrich B. Phillips]]. He studied slavery not so much as a political issue between North and South but as a social and economic system. He focused on the large plantations that dominated the South.
of female patriots. (p. 145). By March 1862, the piney woods region had a 60 percent enlistment rate, comparable to that found in planter areas.
As the war dragged on, hardship became a way of life; Wetherington reports that enough men remained home to preserve the paternalistic social order, yet there were too few to prevent mounting deprivation. Wartime shortages increased the economic divide between planters and yeoman farmers; nevertheless, some planters took seriously their paternalistic obligations by selling their corn to plain folks at the official Confederate rate "out of a spirit of patriotism." (p. 171). Wetherington's argument weakens other scholars' suggestions that [[class conflict ]] led to Confederate defeat. More damaging to Confederate nationalism was the localism that grew as areas had to fend for themselves as Sherman's forces came nearer. During [[Reconstruction]], plain folk viewed freedmen as the greatest affront and humiliating symbol of Yankee victory, so they turned their hatred against [[Carpetbaggers]] (Republicans from the North) and refused to tolerate [[Scalawags]] (white Republicans from the South).
==Civil War and Reconstruction==
* see [[Slave Power]]
* [[American Civil War]]
* [[Reconstruction]]
The story of "[[Gone with the Wind]]" (1936 novel, 1939 film) is intensely anti-war, showing how rebel hot-heads (repeatedly ridiculed by Rhett Butler) take the highly prosperous South into a needless war and destroy their whole way of life.
None of the characters is profoundly changed by the war, except for Scarlett O'Hara. She moves from the frivolous lover of leisure to a Yankee-like shred, hard-driving business leader. It takes a very hard-headed Scarlett to whip the underperforming traditionalistic menfolk into shape to deal with the modern postwar economy.<ref> Scarlett's transformation is exactly what they Yankees had planned for the Southern white men during Reconstruction. See C. Vann Woodward, "The Southern Ethic in a Puritan World," ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul., 1968), pp. 344-370 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921772 in JSTOR]</ref> Rhett, although Southern-born is a war profiteer who is hated by the men because he resembles a mercenary money-grubbing Yankee. Only prostitutes like him. At first Scarlett finds the war merely tiresome as the foolish young men rush out to get killed, spoiling her parties. Scarlett only loves Ashley; she can't have him so she marries a series of men for the money to save Tara, her home. That motivation marks her transformation. As the the first female capitalist of the New South, she resists Rhett's overtures even after marriage showing her choice of money and power over sex and romantic love. In Shakespearian terms, she is a shrew who will not be tamed.
==Age of Jim Crow==
* see [[Jim Crow]]
'''Jim Crow''' was the system of racial segregation in the Southern U.S. from the 1880s to 1964 in which African Americans were segregated (separated) in public schools and public places, so that they did not mingle in public with whites on equal terms. It also means that blacks had little or no political power. It was a low point in [[Black history]] after the euphoria of [[Reconstruction]]. The most prominent black leader was [[Booker T. Washington]].
The Supreme Court of the United States held in the ''Civil Rights Cases'' (1883) that the Fourteenth Amendment did NOT give the federal government the power to outlaw private discrimination. In an even more important decision the Supreme Court held in ''Plessy v. Ferguson'' (1896) that Jim Crow laws were constitutional as long as they allowed for "separate but equal" facilities. Everyone knew that the "equal" in "separate but equal" was a technicality, and that groww great inequality was tolerated in practice.
Today conservatives and liberals alike denounce the policy of Jim Crow as an unacceptable violation of the principle of equal rights for all.
==Presidential politics==
When The South favored the new nation began in 1789 [[Jeffersonian Republicans]] during the two most important schools of interpretation of [[First Party System]], from the Constitution came 1790s to be associated with 1820s. However during the [[Alexander HamiltonSecond Party System]], a Northerner1830-1854, the region was closely balanced between Democrats and the [[Thomas JeffersonWhig Party]], a Southerner. Each came to dominate the thinking of his respective region. The two men were also associated with competing sectors of the economy -- finance for Hamilton and agriculture for Jefferson -- and their supporters were therefore identified with Americans who had widely divergent outlooks on and goals in life. This was one major reason the South has always looked at politics differently than any other major regionDemocrats gaining after 1848.
Political parties were in disarray in the late 1850s and were suspended during the Civil War. During [[Andrew JacksonReconstruction]] was the first national politician to attempt to fuze the two schools. His experiment, a party in which Northern laborers and Southern yeomen would have an equal stake1863-1877, lasted throughout the dominant [[Second Republican Party System]], but was unable to hold out in 1860 against the challenge a coalition of the Freedmen (freed slaves), [[RepublicansCarpetbaggers]] led by (new arrivals from the North), and [[Abraham LincolnScalawags]]. Later Democratic Presidents(white southerners), taking their cue from Lincoln, were far more inspired all supported by Hamilton, seeking almost without exception the U.S. Army. Violent confrontations led to expand the role collapse of the Republican state governments in the 1870s; the last three fell in 1877. They were replaced by the [[Federal governmentRedeemers]]; but the legacy of Jackson and , conservative white Democrats allied to the [[Civil WarBourbon Democrats]] would keep of the South on their side up until 1968North.
From The Democrats repressed a Populist movement in the end of the Civil War 1890s, and dominated every state with rare exceptions down to the 1960 election, the 1964. The "Solid South" as political pundits called it, nearly always supported Democratic presidential candidates. Since 1964, the South has been highly competitiveexcept in 1928, 1952 and 1956.
===1964 to 1992===
Since 1964, the South has been highly competitive. The Solid South began to break down in the 1964 election, when five southern all of the states in the deep south (with the exceptions of Florida and Texas) voted for Republican [[Barry Goldwater]]. The largest and President Johnson's homestate, Texas, remained Democratic. In 1965 blacks were given the vote for the first time since the 1890s, and most of them voted Democratic. In 1968, [[Richard Nixon]] carried Florida, and the Carolinas, while an Independent [[George Wallace]] carried split the restregion, with the exception of Texas, which remained Democratic. Former Democratic Gov. George Wallace commenting on his 1968 Presidential bid declared, that by using a base of electoral votes in the Solid South <ref>[http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/1968ec.gif 1968 Electoral Distribution]</ref> and adding a few Northern and Midwestern industrial belt states, a candidate could accumulate enough electoral votes to win. Wallace did not win in 1968, But eight years later in the 1976 election, Democratic contender [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref>[http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/1976ec.gif 1976 Electoral Distribution].</ref> succesfully employed Wallace's Southern strategy. Beginning in 1972, candidates Richard Nixon (1972), Jimmy Carter (1976), [[Ronald Reagan]] (1984), [[George H.W. Bush]] (1988) carried every southern state.The exception to this was Reagan's election in 1980 when he carried every southern state save incumbent President Jimmy Carter's home state of Georgia.
===1992 to 2004===In the 1976 election, Democratic contender [[Jimmy Carter]].<ref>[http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/1976ec.gif 1976 Electoral Distribution].</ref> swept the region combining the black vote with a majority of evangelical whites. Beginning in 1972, candidates Richard Nixon (1972), Jimmy Carter (1976), [[Ronald Reagan]] (1984), [[George H.W. Bush]] (1988) carried every southern state.<ref>In 1980 Carter carried his home state of Georgia.</ref>
===1992 to 2008===
In 1992 [[Democratic]] candidate [[Bill Clinton]] reassembled Carter's coalition and carried Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia in 1992, but lost Georgia in 1996.<ref>http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps/></ref> [[George W. Bush]] (2000 and 2004) carried every Southern state including Democratic challenger and incumbent Vice President [[Al Gore]]'s home state of Tennessee.
In 2008 Barack Obama broke through, carrying Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, leaving the GOP base in disarray.
==Military==
Large numbers of Southerners have served in the U.S. military. During the Civil War southerners did not volunteer in large enough numbers to match the military needs of the south. Approximately twenty percent of all Confederate soldiers were therefore draftees (compared to eight percent in the Union armies), and they were subject to “compulsory reenlistment.”<ref>Tinadall & Shi, ''America: A Narrative History'', 7th ed.(New York Norton, 2007):616-618.</ref>
==Education==
Liberals have attacked the South and Southerners as being poorly educated and illiterate. While so-called "national average" academic test scores do show the region as a whole lagging "national averages", the results in all cases are within 1% of the "national average." It should also be noted, not all states participated in the survey, and there is large disagreement whether so-called "national averages" in academic test scores exist. Regional economic disparity, cultural factors, and other reasons impact on a state's level of spending on education. And studies have shown no correlation between the amount of money spent on education and academic achievement.
{| style="background:white; color:blue" border="1" class="wikitable"
|Average reading scale score sorted by all students (overall results),<br> grade 8 public schools: By jurisdiction, 1998 and 2005.<ref>U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), >[http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/ 1998 and 2005 Reading Assessments].</ref>
|-
!
! Score
! Change
|-
| '''National Public'''
| '''260'''
| '''.02 '''
|-
| Alabama
| 252
| 1.4
|-
| Arkansas
| 258
| 1.1
|-
| Florida
| 256
| 1.2
|-
| Georgia
| 257
| 1.3
|-
| Kentucky
| 264
| 1.1
|-
| Louisiana
| 253
| 1.6
|-
| Maryland
| 261
| 1.2
|-
| Mississippi
| 251
| 1.3
|-
| North Carolina
| 258
| 0.9
|-
| South Carolina
| 257
| 1.1
|-
| Texas
| 258
| 0.6
|-
| Virginia
| 268
| 1.0
|-
|}
===notes===
<references/>
==Bibliography==
==Plantations ==
* Aiken, Charles S. ''The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War'' Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998; geographical study* Anderson, David. "Down Memory Lane: Nostalgia for the Old South in Post-civil War Plantation Reminiscences." ''Journal of Southern History'' 2005 71(1): 105-136. Issn: 0022-4642 Fulltext: in Ebsco and [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5009563170 online edition]* Camp, Stephanie M. H. ''Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women & Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South.'' U. of North Carolina Press, 2004. 206 pp. * Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. ''Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South'' UNC Press, 1988 [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54351838 online edition]* Genovese, Eugene, ''Roll, Jordan Roll'' (1975), the most important recent studyof slavery.
* Isaac, Rhys. ''Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation'' (2004), re: late 18th century
* Kern, Susan. "The Material World of the Jeffersons at Shadwell." ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 2005 62(2): 213-242. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: at History Cooperative
* McBride, David. "'Slavery as it Is': Medicine and Slaves of the Plantation South." ''Magazine of History'' 2005 19(5): 36-39. Issn: 0882-228x Fulltext in Ebsco
* Morgan, Edmund S. ''American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia'' (1975).
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ''American Negro Slavery; a Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime''. (1918; reprint 1966)[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11490 online at Project Gutenberg]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ''Life and Labor in the Old South''. (1929).
* Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt," ''Political Science Quarterly'' 20#2 (Jun., 1905), pp. 257-275 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195%28190506%2920%3A2%3C257%3ATECOSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I in JSTOR]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts." ''American Historical Review,'' 11 (July, 1906): 798-816. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28190607%2911%3A4%3C798%3ATOAGOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T in JSTOR]
* Phillips, Ulrich B. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7162%28191001%2935%3A1%3C37%3ATDOTPS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W "The Decadence of the Plantation System." ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,'' 35 (January, 1910): 37-41. in JSTOR]
* Joseph P. Reidy; ''From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800-1880'' UNC Press, 1992 [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=12034198 online edition]
* Rothman, Adam. ''Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South'' (2005),
* Ruef, Martin. "The Demise of an Organizational Form: Emancipation and Plantation Agriculture in the American South, 1860-1880." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 2004 109(6): 1365-1410. Issn: 0002-9602 Fulltext: at Ebsco
* Virts, Nancy. "Change in the Plantation System: American South, 1910-1945." ''Explorations in Economic History'' 2006 43(1): 153-176. Issn: 0014-4983
* Volo, James M., and Dorothy Denneen Volo. ''The Antebellum Period.'' (2004), popular culture [http://www.questia.com/read/107031757 online edition]
* Weiner, Marli F. ''Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina, 1830-80.'' U of Illinois Press, 1998
* White, Deborah Gray. ''Ar'nt I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South'' (1999) [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101096405 online edition]
* Woodman, Harold D. "The Political Economy of the New South: Retrospects and Prospects." ''Journal of Southern History.'' 67#4 2001. pp 789+. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002427851 online edition], covers 1877 to 1914
* Hyde Jr., Samuel C. ed., ''Plain Folk of the South Revisited'' (1997).
** Hyde Jr., Samuel C. "Plain Folk Reconsidered: Historiographical Ambiguity in Search of Definition" ''Journal of Southern History'' (Nov 2005) vol 71#4
* Hundley, Daniel R. ''Social Relations in Our Southern States'' (1860; reprint 1979) [http://books.google.com/books?id=ifVLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:Social+intitle:Relations+intitle:in+intitle:Our+intitle:Southern+intitle:States&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0&ei=AC-QR7DVI4bktAPoxMRC complete text online]
* Linden, Fabian. "Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Appraisal of Some Recent Views," ''Journal of Negro History'', 31 (April 1946), 140-89; emphasizes statistical inequality [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992(194604)31%3A2%3C140%3AEDITSS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R in JSTOR]
* Lowe, Richard G. and Randolph B. Campbell, ''Planters and Plain Folk: Agriculture in Antebellum Texas'' (1987)
* McCurry, Stephanie. ''Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country'' (1995),
* McWhiney, Grady. ''Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South'' (1988) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/cracker-culture-celtic-ways-in-the-old-south-by-grady-mcwhiney.jsp online edition], by a leading conservative
* Nobles, Gregory H. "The Transformation of the Other Virginia." ''Reviews in American History,'' Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 506-511 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-7511(198512)13%3A4%3C506%3ATTOTOV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T in JSTOR]
* Osthaus, Carl R. "The Work Ethic of the Plain Folk: Labor and Religion in the Old South." ''Journal of Southern History'' (2004) v. 70#4, 745-82.
* Owsley, Frank Lawrence. with Harriet C. Owsley, "The Economic Basis of Society in the Late Ante-Bellum South," ''Journal of Southern History'' 6 (Feb. 1940): 24-25, [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(194002)6%3A1%3C24%3ATEBOSI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in JSTOR]
* Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, ''Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia'' (2007) [http://www.amazon.com/Why-Confederates-Fought-Virginia-America/dp/0807831581/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200630882&sr=8-12 excerpt and text search]
* Wetherington, Mark V. ''Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia.'' University of North Carolina Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8078-2963-9.
* Winters, Donald L. "'Plain Folk' of the Old South Reexamined: Economic Democracy in Tennessee," ''The Journal of Southern History,'' Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 565-586 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642(198711)53%3A4%3C565%3A%22FOTOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M in JSTOR]
* Wright, Gavin. "'Economic Democracy' and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850-1860," ''Agricultural History'', 44 (January 1970), 63-93 in JSTOR, a statistical critique of Owsley
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ed. ''Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649-1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources.'' 2 Volumes. (1909). [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0x3Uy0t_x4u_7ZGxmq&id=_fk5qIP8hU4C&printsec=titlepage&dq=ulrich+phillips+plantation&as_brr=1 vol 1 online] and [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0aEKo9OlIHJf-m3SKDua41q&id=zoley-snvSkC&printsec=titlepage&dq=Phillips,+Ulrich+B.+ed.+Plantation+and+Frontier+Documents vol 2 online]
==References==<references/> [[Category:GeographyUnited States geography]]
[[Category:United States Politics]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:Slavery]]
[[Category:The South]]
[[Category:Regions of the United States]]
[[Category:United States geography]]
==References==
{{reflist|2}}