The South

The South is usually identified as 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.^{[Citation Needed]} The South is currently defined by the US Census as the above listed states, as well as Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. [1]

Although the south once fought to secede from the union during the Civil War, today they are known as much as all the other states of the Union for their patriotism and commitment to morality in government.

Presidential politics

After the ratification of the U. S. Constitution, the two most important schools of interpretation of that Constitution came to be associated with Alexander Hamilton, a Northerner, and Thomas Jefferson, a Southerner. Each came to dominate the thinking of his respective region, if only following his death. 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 region.

Andrew Jackson 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 stake, lasted throughout the Second Party System, but was unable to hold out in 1860 against the challenge of the Republicans led by Abraham Lincoln. Later Democratic Presidents, taking their cue from Lincoln, were far more inspired by Hamilton, seeking almost without exception to expand the role of the Federal government; but the legacy of Jackson and the Civil War would keep the South on their side up until 1968.

From the end of the Civil War to the 1960 election, the "Solid South" as political pundits called it, nearly always supported Democratic candidates. Since 1964, the South has become increasingly important to Presidential victors.

1964 to 1992

The Solid South began to break down in the 1964 election, when five southern states voted for Republican Barry Goldwater. The largest and President Johnson's homestate, Texas, remained Democratic. In 1968, Richard Nixon carried Florida, and the Carolinas, while an Independent George Wallace carried the rest, 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 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. 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 1992 Democratic candidate Bill Clinton reassembled Carter's coalition and carried Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia in 1992, but lost Georgia in 1996. George W. Bush (2000 and 2004) carried every Southern state including Democratic challenger and incumbent Vice President Al Gore's home state of Tennessee.

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.”

The South also tends to lag behind the rest of the nation academically. Reading and math scores of students in the region are slightly below national averages.