The South As It's Own Nation
The eleven Confederate States – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia -- plus Kentucky and Oklahoma currently form the most consistent and cohesive political South. The premier US publication tracking congressional votes and US politics, the Congressional Quarterly. The same South appeared in a highly significant 3-9 March 2007 special report in London’s influential Economist magazine.
State by state, this political South parallels rather closely the present cultural South, though in certain areas of these thirteen States (southern Florida and south Texas) Southern culture no longer dominates. On the other hand, areas beyond these thirteen States maintain their Southern culture to varying degrees. Much of Missouri remains basically Southern, as do parts of southern Maryland and Maryland’s eastern shore. Some say southern Delaware is Southern still.
West Virginia is a difficult state to sort out. Formed unconstitutionally under the Lincoln presidency to drive a wedge into the South and increase Republican congressional representation, many West Virginians believe their interests differ strongly from those of the Old Dominion, and while culturally Southern seem to prefer the description of “mountaineer” to “Southerner.” Maryland and Delaware have become so liberal that they fit with the Northeast politically, even though some areas there remain politically conservative and definitely Southern in outlook and culture.
The US Census Bureau continues to place West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia within the South. However, the Bureau classes Missouri as a Midwestern state, although today it is politically more conservative in a traditionally Southern sense. Of the thirteen States constituting this “South,” Florida ranks overall as the least southern, primarily because of the massive numbers of Northern, Cuban, and Haitian immigrants who have settled in the Sunshine State. Yet measured by congressional votes, it remains politically a Southern State. Texas is in a category by itself, the western South.
The loss of south Florida and south Texas from the cultural South sharply illustrates what happens when large numbers of immigrants arrive. Culture follows demography. For more than twenty years south Florida has been described as part of the Caribbean, because of the huge influx of Cubans and Haitians. Both south and central Florida are so dominated by Yankees that Southern culture there has been stretched very, very thin – much of it has become wholly unSouthern. As parts of Florida have become Caribbean, so, too, south and southwest Texas have become part of greater Mexico.
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