What is the most quintessential "Old South" state?

[bluestateguy]

Florida is not included because of a lack of space and because is so populated by non-native southerners. Feel free to write it in if you feel otherwise.

[amazona]

1. hmmm....

Well, I voted Alabama. Mississippi no longer qualifies because it is so dominated by the casino industry, which is certainly not in line with old south values.

[FreeperSlayer]

2. South Carolina

The original slave state. They got it started.

[ButterflyBlood]

3. Alabama

just look at that Pryor wingnut

[TheBigGuy]

4. Theres a real interesting geographical divide going on here....

between the "Deep South" and the "Atlantic South"

Virginia and the Carolinas are the Atlantic South. All of these states have sort of a tidewater/low country vs Piedmont thing going on.

Now Id call Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia the "Deep South", with maybe Arkansas and Northern Louisiana & the Florida panhandle and the northern part of that state running thru Live Oak, Gainsville to Jacksonville added to that mix,

So the two most old south states of the Deep and Atlantic South are South Carolina and Mississippi.

[TacticalPeek]

5. You circumscribe the heart of Dixie, true.

But I don't think we allow no quintessential down here.

[DemBones DemBones]

18. Georgia also has a low country versus piedmont thing going on

and you left Tennessee out altogether!

Really, the "Old South" is more associated with certain cities, I think, than with states. I'm thinking about "Moonlight and Magnolias" and the historic areas of Natchez, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans. I don't know if I'd choose any city inTennessee or North Carolina as being similar to those cities. (Small towns are another area to consider.)

If "Old South" is code for racist, though, as some posts implied, you need to put most of the fifty states on the list! :7

[TheBigGuy]

20. Tennessee, Kentucky, the Missouri Ozarks,

most of West Virginia, I would call the Upper South....although there are "deep South" aspects to the 'Jackson Purchase 'parts of Tenessee & Kentucky...

as for cities I think Id call Memphis the gateway to the Deep South (Mississippi version).

Ive been to Macon and it is very "moonlight and magnolias" in parts, too.

[DemoTex]

6. Mississippi, home of William Faulkner

Faulkner's The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion chronicle one of the most dysfunctional and quintessential families of Old South literature: the Snopes.

[TacticalPeek]

8. and Absalom, Absalom!

tells why we always come back.

[short bus president]

7. Go Scurrilina! It's yer birthday!

[ForrestGump]

9. Miss'sippi

Oh yeah.

[TacticalPeek]

10. "The past isn't dead...

it isn't even past."

[RushIsRot]

11. Surely you've heard of N'awlins! Need I say more?

[I AM SPARTACUS]

24. a. New Orleans was always more Old World than Old South...

b. New Orleans is not a state, it's a city
c. Now, New Orleans is more like the decrepit and deteriorating capitol city in a developing country than like an Old Southern city...

[finecraft]

12. Who else has a Confederate Color Guard?

New Iberia Louisiana...4th of July celebration at the town square.....a reading of the names of all the veterans and active duty servicemen from our city, and who was the color guard? 6 guys dressed in Confederate Uniforms. Nobody but me thought that was odd.

[bluestateguy]

13. I voted for Mississippi

With the exception of our insightful Mississipi DUers (Miss. has a thing for producing good writers), it seems like the least progressive and most racist state in the nation.

[inthecorneroverhere]

16. Alabama

Miss actually has more African American elected officials than just about any other state. Politics have changed a *lot* in Mississippi.

Alabama is far more hard-right in politics. South Carolina has a lot of divisions. I find that black & white get along a lot better in Mississippi than in SC or AL.

[JVS]

14. Tough one.

If you mean "Deep South" I say Alabama or Miss.

"Old South" to me can mean the cultural center and roots of the South which would have to be Virginia or South Carolina

[sasquatch]

15. South Carolina is Nazi Germany in a swamp

Beleive I've been there before. I wouldn't go back there if the place was flooded with Spaten Beer and Female College Football Cheerleaders were drowning in it.

[Dulcinea]

19. I think they still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day in SC!

So that gets my vote.

[TacticalPeek]

22. But in Vicksburg, it's mighty hard to get a July 4th celebration,

since that is also the day in the War Between the States that the city fell to the tyrant Grant's siege. The Hill City had virtually impregnable defenses, and could only be taken by a medieval siege with very horrible results for all inhabitants, black and white. It's probably the turning point in the War (flamebait?).

snip
The situation got so bad at one point that in 1947 World War II hero Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was dispatched to Vicksburg, to persuade local whites to begin celebrating the Fourth of July. Some lackluster attention was given to Ike's request for a few years, but eventually the city returned to its old pattern of ignoring the July Fourth celebration. There has not been a city or county-sponsored Fourth of July fireworks display since 1988. Each citizen is left to his or her own devices.
snip

link http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/emb_vick.htm

snip
The city of Vicksburg did not officially recognize the Fourth of July as a holiday again until 1939!
snip

link http://www.terraplanepub.com/century4.htm



They have officially celebrated over the last few years.

Ah, wars past.

[5thGenDemocrat]

28. Tying posts 22 (above) and 21 (below) together

One of my best friends (who just called here five seconds ago) has family (her dad's) still living in Vicksburg. Annie (born in 1940), spent some time with the relatives there during WWII and heard about the locals living in caves, drinking rainwater and eating rats during the Siege in the Civil War.
Anyhow, the Mississippians were her dad's mom's side. Her dad's dad's side lived in Germany, and dad (an infantry colonel with the 116th Inf Regt, 1st Inf Div) was educated overseas and, in fact, was commissioned through his studies in a German gymnasium. He went AWOL from the military hospital he was in in June 1944 (sprained or broken ankle, stories differ), and arrived back with his company just in time to storm Omaha Beach.
About 200 yards up the beach, he caught a German bullet right down the side of his head -- knocking him colder than a mackerel, leaving a really cool scar, and earning him both an evacuation and a Distinguished Service Cross (the regiment is prominently featured in "The Longest Day." They're the ones to whom Robert Mitchum says "there's two types of men on this beach -- those who are dead and those who are going to die -- now let's get the hell out of here!").
Captain (later Colonel) Finke would earn a SECOND DSC during the Rohn River campaign in Nov 44, and later still wrote a book on his experiences as an infantry captain which is still on the reading list for infantry officer candidates at Fort Benning, GA. His kids, Annie and Detmar, played with the helmet and helmet liner as children and Annie remembers the entry and exit holes very well.
Anyhow, all that was said just to point out that, with all that Mississippian and German background, Annie is THE most liberal person I know. One could say, I guess, that she gets her politics from her mom (who was a lifelong friend of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke, a Saginaw native) but, even there, her mom's family included several of the biggest capitalists in Saginaw history (I mean, these guys had a store whose customers came from all over northeastern Michigan and made them rich enough to help found the biggest bank in town). They were the backbone of Saginaw Republicanism for years.
I don't know -- she got it somewhere.
John
And I got part of mine from her. For which I thank her and forgive her for being a Tri-Delt in college.

[prez_sux]

29. are you from vicksburg too???

i was born and raised, in college now, you from v-burg?

[TacticalPeek]

30. Nope, Prez_Sux...

But I have worked there a lot, and like the town and people.

The Vicksburg Miliitary Park is nice, especially the Illinois Monument, when one is recreationally reinforced.

[5thGenDemocrat]

31. Wish I was

Just a guy born in the Center of the Universe (Saginaw, Michigan) who majored in American History -- esp the Civil War stuff . I am related (fourth cousin) to US Grant, which makes the Vicksburg story somewhat personal. Also, my g2grandfather was a Confederate soldier captured (also by Grant) at the Battle of Fort Donelson.
John
I will ask Annie what her V'burg family's name is. Maybe you know them -- I understand they've lived in the same house for, like, five generations.
ON EDIT: Annie says the Mississippi family names are McNeely and Berkeley. Her aunts Pep and Skeet lived to be 101 and 102, respectively. Ring any bells?

[TheBigGuy]

21. South Carolina IS actually tied to Germany ....

...economocially speaking. The Palmetto State has been making a big push to recruit German manufacturing, even instituting German language programs so people can speak w. the new bosses.....

I guess they are trying to be a "Mexico" to Germany....

[mitchum]

23. I remember when BMW had the groundbreaking ceremony for their plant...

in SC. The local orchestra played actually played "Deutschland uber alles"! Even the corporate descendants of Nazis were horrified, and had to explain that the selsction was inapproriate. Comedy at it's blackest.

[DemoTex]

26. The runway at GSP (Greenville-Spartanburg Airport) was lengthened for BMW.

It is now an 11,000-foot CatIIIB instrument runway (land with 600-ft visibility). A big cargo ramp was built on the northeast corner of the airport, with a road linking it directly to the BMW plant on I-85. Who paid for this expansion? I do not know. I doubt that BMW paid for it though. The relatively few airline and corporate operations (by relatively small jets and turboprobs) in and out of GSP would never, in a million years, justify this kind of airport expansion and navaid upgrading. Never.

[TacticalPeek]

27. In Mississippi, to get a Nissan plant recently,

the gummint financed it, roaded it and even put in an I-55 interchange.

In return, the locals get the payroll, but the "free flow of capital" goes to furriners.

Actually, I myself need a new office building and new computers. And since I want it out by a lake, guess I need a road.
Maybe I should just re-incorporate in a P. O. box in Tokyo.

[bluestateguy]

17. kick

:kick:

[mitchum]

25. Feudalism is still alive and well in South Carolina

One factor is that it is a geographically small state. A handful of families and their associates can maintain control throughout the centuries.