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Civil War affects relationship between the north and southIn the USA, slavery has, does, and will always be at the bottom of every issue, every supposed cause, every reason why the South was ultimately led from the Union. It will not go away, it will not recede, it will not be driven from the pages of our collective history.The North and South have always been culturally different even to this day, but the simple fact remains, without slavery, without those who were in charge who had a vested interest in slavery, no Civil Way would have been fought, not one of those non slaveholding boys would have ever needed to enlist, fight and die for the Confederacy. . There was simply no other reason, no other cause, that could bring about the slaughter of 620,000 Americans. Slavery, and the South's refusal to give it up, but its stubborn insistence to protect it, to maintain it, to expand it at the expense of others, brought on the war and the need for non slaveholders to sacrifice their homes, their families, and their lives for one of the worst reasons ever to go to war.The institution of slavery was regarded as immoral in the 18th century western world and had been eliminated in European colonies, but it remained strong in the American south, and it lowered the value and soul of the south and retarded southern economic development. First and foremost, immigrants coming to the United States generally settled in the North where they could earn a wage. Secondly, with slavery, markets tend to 'undervalue' labor and rely on labor intensive practices to the detriment of capital. As a result, the South remain heavily dependent on agriculture as the North industrialized. The North had the advantages of having the moral high ground.There was widespread acceptance of and support for slavery in the antebellum south that went beyond the owners of record of slaves. Slaves formed nearly half the southern population and were everywhere, plus slavery was not just an economic/labor system, it was a system of social control sustained by a people who could not conceive of living with 4 million free blacks who as freedmen might expect some modicum of political power.The American Civil War , fought over many 'States Rights' and cultural issues, would never have been fought without slavery, and was a bloody, brutal time in the history of the US. It not only pitted "brother against brother," as the saying goes; it was also a fight over the soul of the country for (at least) the next 150 years.Essentially the South only had to muster the will to keep fighting until the North felt like quitting. That didn't happen, but theoretically it could have. The south had the advantage of having a large motivated army. The South were the ones who started this war, they want to finish it. They were the ones with a motive. The North just wants to put the country back together.So here is a little history . . . The Islamic Ottoman Empire defeated the eastern Christian Roman empire headquartered in Constantinople and closed the western trade routes to the East - India. Spain sent Columbus west across the unexplored Atlantic in 1492 to find a new route to India whereupon he came upon the Caribbean and new trade routes from Europe to the Americas were established. Spain then started the African slave trade in the 15th century to help build its western Caribbean and south American frontier settlements. Other European countries continued the way west for settlements and continued the slave trade to build cities and farm land. Most of the African slave trade went to the Caribbean, central and South America - Brazil got the most, the US the least. The enslavement of African Americans in what became the United States formally began during the 1630s and l64OsAccording to a variety of sources, only 400,000 Africans of 12.5 million shipped from various parts of Africa as part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade made it to North America from the 16th century to 19th century. Children made up about 26% of the total number. Britain and the US outlawed the slave trade in 1805, but illegal shipments from Africa snuck in.In the Caribbean and South America - except Brazil where slaves were integrated and married into the population settling the Amazon - plantation masters argued callously that it was "cheaper to buy than to breed"--it was cheaper to work the slaves to death and then buy new ones than it was to allow them to live long enough and under sufficiently healthy conditions that they could bear children to increase their numbers. During this phase, the life span of a slave from initial purchase to death was only seven years. The conditions in the US were far better than elsewhere and the slave population lived longer and grew exponentially. By the time of the Civil War there were more than 5 million slaves in the US, all most all in the south being used for cotton plantations. Prior to independence, slavery existed in all the American colonies and therefore was not an issue of sectional debate. With the arrival of independence fro0m Britain however, the new Northern states - those of New England along with New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey - came to see slavery as immoral and contradictory to the ideals of the Revolution and instituted programs of gradual emancipation. By 1820 there were only about 3,000 slaves in the North, almost all of them working on large farms in New Jersey.Virginia planters began to free many of their slaves in the decade after the Revolution as well. Some did so because they believed in the principles of human liberty. After all, Virginian slave owners wrote some of the chief documents defining American freedom like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and much of the Bill of Rights. Others, however, did so for a much more cynical reason. Their surplus slaves had become a burden to house and feed. In response, they emancipated those who were too old or feeble to be of much use on the plantation. Ironically, one of the first laws in Virginia restricting the rights of masters to free their slaves was passed for the protection of the slaves. It denied slave owners the right to free valueless slaves, thus throwing them on public charity for survival. Many upper South slave owners around 1800 believed that slavery would gradually die Out because there was no longer enough work for the slaves to do, and without masters to care for them, the ex-slaves would die out as well.The US Census of 1860 showed the eleven Southern States that would form the Confederacy to be 9 million of which more than 4 million were slaves and about another 500,000 were free blacks. Slaves were everywhere in the south, nearly half of the population was of African descent. When the Civil War started, about 500,000 whites left the south to fight for the north. So that left less than five million white southerners to fight the 24 million white northerners. The rounding is done to include US territories that were so far removed from the war, rounding up to the nearest million . Slaves were part of the culture and all around the south, they were rented out as labors to small farms pulling in a harvest, became blacksmiths and Mississippi stevedores on the paddle boats, and were all around field hands. Slavery in the antebellum South was not a monolithic system; its nature varied widely across the region. At one extreme one white family in thirty owned slaves in Delaware; in contrast, half of all white families in South Carolina did so. Overall, 26 percent of Southern white families owned slaves.In 1860, families owning more than fifty slaves numbered less than 10,000; those owning more than a hundred numbered less than 3,000 in the whole South. The typical Southern slave owner possessed one or two slaves, and the typical white Southern male owned none. He was an artisan, mechanic, or more frequently, a small farmer. This reality is vital in understanding why white Southerners went to war to defend slavery in 1861. Most of them did not have a direct financial investment in the system. Their willingness to fight in its defense was more complicated and subtle than simple fear of monetary loss. They deeply believed in the Southern way of life, of which slavery was an inextricable part. They also were convinced that Northern threats to undermine slavery would unleash the pent-up hostilities of 4 million African American slaves who had been subjugated for centuries.Black slaves were bred for size and were much larger than those found in Africa who tended to be spindle and small. Also, white slave owners bred with black slaves build the slave population and lighten their skin color which brought higher prices on the slave selling blocks. Is anyone going to deny the massive amounts of master/slave babies? Plus slavery was not just an economic/labor system, it was a system of social control sustained by a people who could not conceive of living with 4 million free blacks who as freedmen might expect some modicum of political power.One half of all Southerners in 1860 were either slaves themselves or members of slaveholding families. These elite families shaped the mores and political stance of the South, which reflected their common concerns. Foremost among these were controlling slaves and assuring an adequate supply of slave labor. The legislatures of the Southern states passed laws designed to protect the masters right to their human chattel. Central to these laws were "slave codes," which in their way were grudging admissions that slaves were, in fact, human beings, not simply property like so many cattle or pigs. They attempted to regulate the system so as to minimize the possibility of slave resistance or rebellion. In all states the codes made it illegal for slaves to read and write, to attend church services without the presence of a white person, or to testify in court against a white person. Slaves were forbidden to leave their home plantation without a written pass from their masters. Additional laws tried to secure slavery by restricting the possibility of manumission (the freeing of ones slaves). Between 1810 and 1860, all Southern states passed laws severely restricting the right of slave owners to free their slaves, even in a will. Free blacks were dangerous, for they might inspire slaves to rebel. As a consequence, most Southern states required that any slaves who were freed by their masters leave the state within thirty days.To enforce the slave codes, authorities established "slave patrols." These were usually locally organized bands of young white men, both slave owners and yeomen farmers, who rode about at night checking that slaves were securely in their quarters. Although some planters felt that the slave patrolmen abused slaves who had been given permission to travel, the slave patrols nevertheless reinforced the sense of white solidarity between slave owners and those who owned none. They shared a desire to keep the nonwhite population in check. (These antebellum slave patrols are seen by many historians as antecedents of the Reconstruction era Ku Klux Klan, which similarly tried to discipline the freed blacks. The Klan helped reinforce white solidarity in a time when the class lines between ex--slave owners and white yeomen were collapsing because of slavery's end.)White southerners were uneducated and ignorant to the world. The antebellum South neglected to provide for the education of its people. Planters controlled the governmental revenues that could have financed public education, but they saw no need to do so. Their slaves were forbidden to learn; their own children were educated by private tutors or in exclusive and expensive private academies. As a result, most white yeomen were left without access to education. A few lucky ones near towns or cities could sometimes send their children to fee schools or charity schools, but many were too poor or too proud to use either option.Slavery in the antebellum South, then, made a minority of white Southerners - owners of large slaveholdings--enormously wealthy. At the same time, it demeaned and exploited Southerners of African descent, left the majority of white Southerners impoverished and uneducated, and retarded the overall economic, cultural, and social growth of the region. Slavery was the institution by which the South defined itself when it chose to secede from the Union. But it was the existence of slavery, with its negative impact on politics, economics, and social relations, that fatally crippled the South in its bid for independence.Extremely wealthy plantation owners managed to convince the general people that the federal government had overstepped its bounds by demanding freedom for slaves. Lets face it; the poor whites, who owned no land, owned no slaves, and couldn't vote, had nothing to gain from the war, whether they knew it or not. The situation was ugly enough that the Confederate Army rapidly ran out of volunteers and had to institute conscription (what we would now call the Draft).On top of everything else, no foreign nation recognized the Confederacy as a sovereign power, and they lost much of the trade they were counting on to support the war effort. Even without the Union blockade, much of the cotton for export would have sat on the docks anyway. All of this basically crushed Confederate morale; about 2/3 of the Confederate Army deserted, which really suggests that they began to question why they were fighting at all.South's Advantages: Outstanding general . Strong military traditions, better leadership, they were fighting on home ground . Skilled with guns & horses. Cotton was King.North's advantages: four times the population, manufacturing ability, traditional advantage in weapons - artillery, including new rifled cannon Industrial capability - access to all kinds of war-supplies; more railroad mileage - whole armies could move by train Big enough navy to blockade Southern coast, all battles (except Gettysburg) fought on southern soil.It may surprise someone new to the history of the American Civil War that black men fought for the Confederacy, but it's true. An estimated 3,000 to 6,000 fought as soldiers while another 100,000 supported the armies of the South as laborers and teamsters (though their motivation is in dispute). By the end of the war, 10% of the Union Army and Navy was made up of black men.At the same time, roughly 25% of recruits for the Union army were immigrants. By 1860, 13% of Americans were born overseas and 43% of the armed forces were either immigrants or the sons of immigrants.Foreigners lined up at US diplomatic legations abroad to join the Union cause - so many that the US minister to Berlin had to put a sign up to tell people his office was not a recruiter,It was Sherman's capture of Atlanta that won Lincoln's reelection in 1864, ending the Democratic Party's call for peace talks. His march to the sea and subsequent uncontested sweep through the Carolinas devastated the South and hastened the end of the war.President Lincoln outlawed slavery in US territories in 1862. He freed slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves held in rebel states.An estimated 625,000 people were killed in the Civil War, and that number includes only the troops. There were an estimated 225,000 civilian casualties, which would set the total as high as 850,000. When tens of thousands of soldiers shit on fields, huge waste dumps are created attracting insects like mosquitoes that bite soldiers many who get malaria and many die. The No. 1 killer of Civil War troops was disease - the most prevalent of those were dysentery, typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, and simple childhood troubles like measles and mumps. Flies, mosquitoes, ticks, lice, maggots, and fleas were rampant, and germ theory was not yet accepted medical practice.The now-controversial and highly recognizable Rebel, or Dixie, flag wasn't the official banner of the Confederate States of America. The crossed-bar flag was actually just the battle flag of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. A few states, including North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee, still base their flag on different iterations of the actual, official CSA flag. The "Stars and Bars" flag that represented the Southern states features three bars and seven stars.After the Civil War, freed black slaves became the Tiger by the tail in the US. In the North where free laborers wanted no part of the black refugees whom they feared would destroy their livelihood. The NY riots were the result. And my, weren't those refugees welcomed with open arms over the past 150 years? Freed black Africans mixing with white Europeans have been problematic for 150 years after the war.Since the Civil War, Southern institutions had made segregation and Jim Crow laws part of the main stream social and economic landscape. It was standard Southern thinking and tradition. I felt that many Southern white people supported segregation because their DNA was basically racist from four hundred years of slavery and Jim Crow, and even in these modern times, they were trained from childhood to believe in race separation based on White superiority. It was ingrained in all their religious, political, educational, and government institutions. Racial segregation and White superiority was in their bones and yet they were born again Christians . . . what a farce! Norfolk was a southern town and fighting to the death Civil Rights. For years, Norfolk was crazed with government enforced segregation, police violence, and was targeted by Southern governors as their test court case against school integration. Norfolk had the usual lunch counter sit-ins, Ku Klux Klan running around threatening people who agreed with the Civil Rights movement like me, burning crosses on their front lawn and even killing people. Leroy Vancamp, my next neighbor, was the news anchor for the local TV station and he would report every night about the “communists” running amuck trying to destroy our southern way of life and damning the fascist federal government for trying to de segregate the south. I would approach him critically for this kind of opinionating, and he said that is the way it is and if I don’t like it, get out and go north. Believe it or not, that is the way it was back then. That’s the way most southerners looked at civil rights, as a communist movement, and Martin Luther King and his cohorts being communist provocateurs. They preached this from the church pulpit and if you went against this messaging, you were in real trouble. There was no dissent allowed. Organize a protest march and the police would sic the dogs on you and you would be arrested. It was Nazi Germany all over again.The 1960s SouthThe Civil War is like a mountain range that guards all roads into the South: you can’t go there without encountering it. Specifically, you can’t go there without addressing a question that may seem as if it shouldn’t even be a question - to wit: what caused the war? One hundred years after the event, the Confederate Flag still flies south of the Mason Dixon line and southerners don't think the Civil War had anything to do with slavery - regardless that Jefferson Davis and all the seceding states stated slavery was the reason for the war. It was the 1960s and African Americans were waging epic struggles for civil rights that altered white Southerners’ worlds that reacted with hostility. They feared social and political change, and grappled uncomfortably with the fact that their way of life seemed gone for good.The “Southern way of life” encompassed a distinctive mix of economic, social, and cultural practices — symbolized by the fragrant magnolia, the slow pace of life, and the sweet mint julep, a popular alcoholic beverage. It also contained implications about the region’s racial order - one in which whites wielded power and blacks accommodated. Centuries of slavery and decades of segregation cemented a legal and political system characterized by white dominance. By the 20th century, “Jim Crow” had become shorthand for legalized segregation. Massive inequalities marked every facet of daily life. Blacks always addressed whites as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” though whites seldom bestowed such courtesy titles on African Americans. Blacks labored in white homes as nannies, cooks, maids, and yardmen. Whites expected docility; black resistance seemed unfathomable.The American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s represents a pivotal event in world history. The positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt throughout the United States and much of the world. Although this struggle for black equality was fought on hundreds of different “battlefields” throughout the United States, many observers at the time described the state of Mississippi as the most racist and violent. In 1955, Reverend George Lee, vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and NAACP worker, was shot in the face and killed for urging blacks in the Mississippi Delta to vote. Although eyewitnesses saw a carload of whites drive by and shoot into Lee's automobile, the authorities failed to charge anyone. Governor Hugh White refused requests to send investigators to Belzoni, Mississippi, where the murder occurred.In August 1955, Lamar Smith, sixty-three-year-old farmer and World War II veteran, was shot in cold blood on the crowded courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi, for urging blacks to vote. Although the sheriff saw a white man leaving the scene 'with blood all over him' no one admitted to having witnessed the shooting” and “the killer went free. Mississippi's lawmakers, law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens worked long and hard to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the state since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The method that ensured segregation persisted was the use and threat of violence against people who sought to end it. On September 25, 1961, farmer Herbert Lee was shot and killed in Liberty, Mississippi, by E.H. Hurst, a member of the Mississippi State Legislature. Hurst murdered Lee because of his participation in the voter registration campaign sweeping through southwest Mississippi. Authorities never charged him with the crime. Hurst was acquitted by a coroner's jury, held in a room full of armed white men, the same day as the killing. Hurst never spent a night in jail.”NAACP State Director Medgar Evers was gunned down in 1963 in his Jackson driveway by rifle-wielding white Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith from Greenwood, Mississippi. Perhaps the most notable episode of violence came in Freedom Summer of 1964, when civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner left their base in Meridian, Mississippi, to investigate one of a number of church burnings in the eastern part of the state. The Ku Klux Klan had burned Mount Zion Church because the minister had allowed it to be used as a meeting place for civil rights activists.After the three young men had gone into Neshoba County to investigate, they were subsequently stopped and arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. After several hours, Price finally released them only to arrest them again shortly after 10 p.m. He then turned the civil rights workers over to his fellow Klansmen. The group took the activists to a remote area, beat them, and then shot them to death. Dittmer suggests that because Schwerner and Goodman were white the federal government responded by establishing an FBI office in Jackson and calling out the Mississippi National Guard and U. S. Navy to help search for the three men. Of course this was the response the Freedom Summer organizers had hoped for when they asked for white volunteers.BirminghamCivil Rights were afoot and then came along Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, who was a driving force in the push for racial equality in the 1950's and the 1960's. In 1963, King and his staff focused on Birmingham, Alabama. They marched and protested nonviolently, raising the ire of local officials who sicced water cannon and police dogs on the marchers, whose ranks included teenagers and children. The bad publicity and breakdown of business forced the white leaders of Birmingham to concede to some anti segregation demands. King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the US Government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives. Martin Luther King dreamed that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Noble Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism. The battle lines are drawn in Birmingham, Alabama, that was, in 1960, "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Although the city's population of almost 350,000 was 60% white and 40% black, Birmingham (as most southern cities) had no black police officers, firefighters, sales clerks in department stores, bus drivers, bank tellers, or store cashiers. Black secretaries could not work for white professionals. Jobs available to blacks were limited to manual labor in Birmingham's steel mills, work in household service and yard maintenance, or work in black neighborhoods. When layoffs were necessary, black employees were the first to go. The unemployment rate for blacks was two and a half times higher than for whites. The average income for blacks in the city was less than half that of whites. Significantly lower pay scales for black workers at the local steel mills were common. Racial segregation of public and commercial facilities throughout Jefferson County was legally required, covered all aspects of life, and was rigidly enforced. Only 10 percent of the city's black population was registered to vote in 1960.The Civil Rights plan called for direct nonviolent action to attract media attention to "the biggest and baddest city of the South," with a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins at libraries and lunch counters, kneel‑ins by black visitors at white churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a voter‑registration drive. Most businesses responded by refusing to serve demonstrators. Some white spectators at a sit‑in at a Woolworth's lunch counter spat upon the participants. A few hundred protesters, including jazz musician Al Hibbler, were arrested, although Hibbler was immediately released by Connor.President John F. Kennedy later said of him, "The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln."Southerners view Northerners1950sAfter high school in 1955, I was in the South, first assigned to Bainbridge for Weapons School, then Norfolk for duty on a WW II Destroyer in the 2nd Fleet. I found Norfolk to be an ugly and mean city. Was this what the south was like I asked? I found everyday social life was depressing, very different from my home of Milwaukee, an open minded critical thinking white European working man's society, liberal and socially generous, with thousands of things to do vs. the South which was backward, racist and low brow nasty, with nothing to do and racially legally segregated. If you had to make a comparison between good and evil, the south was definitely evil. Us northerners wondered how anyone could live here in this colorless and dull witted society, hypocrites - full of Bible belt evangelical religion and hateful to the core.Whereas in Milwaukee segregation between the races [there were very few blacks in Milwaukee back then] was social and very much class oriented, here in the South the races were separated by law which was vigorously enforced by the police and they seemed to relish harassing Blacks, military or civilian. By civilized Milwaukee standards, these southern police were psychopaths, escaped guards from Nazi Germany prison camps. Any type of non whites, including Asians, Puerto Ricans, Caribbean's, etc., didn't get any respect and were treated terribly. If your skin was darker, you were legally separated into a lower class and discriminated against. Even the Jews, just like my childhood buddies from my old neighborhood, were held in low esteem and treated like garbage.I got my start in NYC in the 1950s when I was in the Navy spending many weekend liberties in Manhattan seeking to escape the segregated and dismal south. Times Square was an euphoria of delight, a paradigm of exoticness coupled with the world's diversity of peoples and life styles all wrapped in one package. During our annual 'Fleet Week' when my Battle Group visited New York City and my Destroyer anchored in the Hudson by the George Washington Bridge, I stood Military Police in Times Square before we were deployed to the Med for six to eight months. Compared to dismal Norfolk, Manhattan was like comparing Paris to Calcutta.1960sAfter serving in the Navy and now living in the south as an IBM Engineer begs some comparisons. I spent many years in the Tidewater, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia and enjoyably lived the hunting and fishing small town culture. Most people in this area were associated with the military, were conservative, very religious (even though they supported Jim Crow segregation which really mystified me).The Civil Rights struggle awakens the world and southern politicians and misguided evangelical pastors perverting Biblical truth and cloaking politics with religion are preying on the fears of those same people that are afraid of losing their white superiority traditions and culture. However, the era brought forth one of the greatest human beings to ever walk the planet in Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)I loved the six years hunting in Dismal Swamp filled with poisonous snakes - rattlers- pygmy and diamondbacks - cottonmouths, hog-nosed and all manners of wild pigs, biting insects were all as big as your thumb or hand and gators. You could run into black bears anytime, in fact I saw a couple of panthers long-distance once and got surprised by a humongous wild hog when biking on some backwoods trails.People died in the swamp and what with flesh eating critters and heat, their remains were totally decomposed into the earth within a week. I played around with some mudpuppies, scores of lizards and the endless parade of insects and even had Sand Sharks brush up against my legs in the ocean. When I think of all the snake and animal things wandering around I cringe even as an adult. Believe it or not, I did became a red neck with 20 guns, had my own 18-foot cabin cruiser, hung around with the good ole boys as I fished and hunted with them, sipped white lightening and developed a taste for grits and BBQ chicken.. I became a politician working for Jack Kennedy, Civil Rights worker and a Red Neck all at the same time.The south is a land of comfort, low speed ease, warm weather, tradition, good friends and hospitality. Everyone is so polite, they say "Bless your heart" which makes it OK when followed by a verbal bomb, like "Your breath stinks. " But while it is all giving with warm fuzzys on the surface, I still felt underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. There is so much 'anti' feelings exhibited toward people not like them, like Yankees and most especially New Yorker with their liberal values.. I felt southern culture was kind of ridiculous. Sweet tea. Lots of churches. Religious judgmental attitudes out the wazoo. Ugh It just seemed so phony. But every corner I turned, there was an voluptuous white or black woman in a spring, floral-print dress with big hair and too much makeup, smiling and telling me, "Bless yer heart." I kinda liked that! Made me feel good and welcome.But the south has great irritations for me. For example, The "War" ain't over, the confederacy lives on and the south will rise again in the Deep South like Alabama and Mississippi is heard often in churches and town halls... They have a world view separate from the rest of the USA. They want to teach "creationism" in the schools and elect ultra conservative politicians who want to make the USA a Christian nation. From the outside it has looked like a gaggle of incompetent evangelical inbreeds at times.I will never accept evangelicals constantly putting their religion into politics and always the ultra conservative kind that supports racial segregation, fights the Civil Rights movement saying it s communist just like Martin Luther King and all his cohorts just like me. I don't like the constant Confederate reminders, rants against immigrants and critical thinkers and the unrequited love of guns and 'Stand Your ground' culture.Yes the south is backward, I see things on a daily basis that test my patience. I have never seen so many Confederate flags as I have since I moved here, and every single time it makes me angry. When that happens, I take a deep breath and remind myself that people believe what they are taught to believe - the people flying those flags were taught by parents, teachers, or whoever else that those banners are symbols of history, not of the systematic oppression of someone who looked different than they do.Northerners tend to be far more educated, industrialized, high tech, socially advanced, and immigrant driven worldly. More students from Northern States go to Ivy League and highly academic Colleges and get more well rounded educations. The North generally spearheaded and protected many of the American social and domestic human rights movements as a first world country in the early 1900's to ensure the good of its people. The south still remains in a backward thinking, a capricious slumber in which visions of white power and hate speech are as common as the rising of the sun.The south is vastly different than the north - It’s not really strictly a Northern vs. Southern thing. It’s much more related to being an urban vs. rural thing, although that’s not everything. There is also their extreme religiosity, slave and Jim Crow history and resultant Civil War where 650,000 people were killed leaving deep feelings in the south. There is a saying in the south "The War ain't over."Southern States Generally are more Conservative than the Northern StatesLike nearly everything else in the South, it has to do with slavery. Southern society was never founded on the same egalitarian concepts as the North. The South was established as slavery based system for two and a half centuries. Jefferson Davis and the southern governors all said slavery was the reason for succession and that with Lincoln as president the ‘Slaveholding States’ would no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government had become their enemy.The North parts of the country have very different histories right from the beginning. In New England (NE), you typically had small farmers, merchants and religious nonconformists. They set up a society based on modern infrastructures, agricultural mores (fences and laws), education and somewhat austere and very different faith traditions. In NE, you had a strong elementary level of education for almost everybody and (for a few) university education. The North was established as an immigrant driven, manufacturing and freedom oriented country, the South as a plantation system using slave labor. In the south, you had a Bible belt mentality, very little education, not much infrastructure, it was an agrarian society built on cotton and slave labor. At the time of the Civil War, there 4.8 million black slaves and 5 million whites in the south. The North ended up being more industrial and the people much wealthier, while the South stayed very rural, poor and secluded.My Midwestern history was formed by my immigrant Viking/German/Irish family, with a long history in ship building, construction within a highly disciplined traditional family life filled with rigid values. My growing up normal was a traditional one for decency, stability and political order, e.g.: you get an education, work hard, keep your nose clean, stay away from bad people, develop and keep enlightened ideals, persist in your endeavors, get married and have kids, watch them close and love them constantly, grow old gracefully and you will and yours win. You stand for what is right and fight the evils of bigotry, fascism, communism, murder and mayhem throughout the world, respect our flag and military for defending our ideals.Differences between the North and the South were readily apparent well before the American Revolution. Economic, social and political structures differed significantly between the two regions, one an oligarchy slave labor agrarian region, the other a democratic manufacturing region, and these disparities only widened in the 1800s. In 1861, the Civil War erupted between the two sides, and much of the conflict surrounded sectional differences. Once the war ended, Reconstruction lessened some sectional disparities but increased others like a never ending animosity toward Yankees.But what is considered the south? I think the south is the old Confederacy who many call Dixie which has become one of those stereotypes of Red Necks, pickup trucks, low IQ, Fox News officiandos, and Confederate Flags. For political pundits, it’s shorthand for 'White People' South of I-64 or I-40 who goes to evangelical churches and vote Republican. Mysteriously, although black people can be found in vast numbers in Southern states and arguably have more collective sweat equity in the region than anybody, but whenever pundits say “Dixie” they are always talking exclusively about the ugly fat white people who chew tobacco then spit, think the north started the Civil War and is socialist, ungodly and secular, Obama is a Muslim, 500 pounders who go to Wal*Mart in bikini shorts and wife beater T shirts and think they are pretty or handsome. We could say, for example, that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow NASCAR, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt possum, go to evangelical - Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to scotch (if they drink at all) are likely to be Southerners. Bottom line, southerners think highly of themselves and try very hard to be different. In any case, the South still is at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap in the USA and is responsible for the huge culture wars in the USA, it being about the ultra conservative religious and political types embedded in the 19th century verses the secular progressives living in the 21st century.Today the southern US is the fastest growing region in the country. The north is taxing its citizens to death and it is cold. And the south has socially modernized to some extent. What is called segregation is big cities all over the USA have huge pockets of minority (Black, Brown, Korean, etc.) neighborhoods, but I think this represents people sticking to their own kind. Let's face it; whites tend to be Republicans and minorities Democratic and today that represent a huge difference in culture.As a 82 year old Yankee who lived in the south and was involved in the civil rights struggle, I remember well the segregated south, the separate schools, washrooms and water fountains, the lynching, marching and murders of civil rights workers. Those were violent times and most interesting too. The washrooms marked “colored” were unisex. I’m speaking here of gas station facilities. I would use those marked “colored” when the “White” washrooms had a line. In some places the police would arrest you for using a 'colored' washroom, jail you ad treat you brutally. In some places no one ever said a word to us. And honestly they were cleaner than the “White” washrooms, since the Black people did not write on the walls. The “White” men’s rooms were full of graffiti and tons of offers for sex - mostly of the homosexual variety. I could go on about those days, but why? Segregation of that sort is long gone. Towns and cities may be segregated even to day, but not by law. And public businesses are assuredly not.The south started changing after WW II. Between jamming millions of men into military service which forced them all to accommodate each other and learn a bit about the varieties of people and culture and America's 'Great Generation' becoming industrialized, America was changing greatly. Then there were the 1960s freeways, people got more connected, rest stops became cleaner and facilities more uniform. Small towns either became smaller or got foreign manufacturing to build there. Cities became larger and more indistinguishable from many across the nation. And finally there was air conditioning. That allowed the south to accommodate Yankees used to cooler weather and they came by the millions - much to the chagrin of the southerners.I live in the south now and love it - where high school football is the second religion, warm weather, cheap housing and low taxes for a retiree is a good thing. However, religion and politics is different than my northern experiences, the south its very conservative; church going, Trump loving and immigrant hating territory. And our pace and style are markedly different from other areas of the country. Here people live a much lower pace, eat lots of fast food, socialize from churches instead of as northerners do in shopping mall bowling alleys, Diners, highway [sic Holiday Inn] sausage and salad buffets, and family oriented sports bars with big TV screens showing football and baseball games, serving pizza, boiled eggs and pigs feet with sour pickles. Believe it or not I’ve even eaten decent cornbread and black eyed peas in New HampshireSince integration has occurred and is now an accepted, normal fact of life, the last echo of Jim Crow South is attenuating to nothing. The virulent racists of the previous generation are mostly gone. The racism of my generation is emasculated, frustrated and isolated. When we finally die-off we will carry with us the last memories of Jim Crow. Racism won’t be entirely gone but it will be such an oddity that I hope my descendants will just laugh at the foolishness of people; scratching their heads, wondering what the fuss was about. So maybe that still sets us apart a bit—the fast-fading memory of Jim Crow segregation. The south has a 'Black heavy' population who form a majority in many southern counties and most cities. But racism is a very big issue here from both sides. As a result, it seems as though crime and police brutality is higher here than in most places throughout the U.S.The south is still deeply conscious and disturbed by the Civil War where many call it the war of ' Northern Aggression' since most of the battles were fought here and Sherman's march across Georgia to the sea is still lamented. I could say something cliché like people there still fly rebel flags in their yards, but the truth is since the mid-seventies there has been so much redistribution of people and younger people growing up with more modern and widely held habits and ideas etc that there is not anything that happens there now that doesn’t happen in every part of the world.The south is all about food which is greatly influenced by traditional Black cooking. Fried chicken, frog’s legs, turnips (the green parts), grits, black eyed peas, chitterlings, ham hocks, and such. The south was built by Black cooking and Black labor. But go to any large southern city and you will find every nationality of food known: from French to Laotian - all served with ICED tea, usually sweetened. One drinks iced tea all year in the south. Of course the high brows do have their hot tea too, and folks have green tea, and, yes, there are vegans!Yes the north has a few dishes but they taste nothing like the dishes from the south. Especially in the coastal states. You will find they eat just about anything they can farm, fish or hunt. Yes opossum, raccoons, deer, snake, squirrel, turtle, shark, stingray, oysters, sheep, etc. You name it if it can be cooked, it can be eaten. Animal parts and organs are also eaten. They eat pig feet, tail, hog mawls, chitterlings, cow tongue, chicken feet, chicken gizzards, chicken neck and chicken and beef livers. Its not uncommon to see a frozen cow head or goat head for sale in the store. Yes they will eat foods some throw away. They find ways to make them taste and look delicious. They wash it down with sweet tea, freshly squeezed lemonade or soda.There are lots of hurricanes, trailer parks and rain. Where small towns and cities well north of the Gulf Coast become RV trailer parks for evacuees when hurricanes are heading towards land. Where divided highways become one-way for traffic evacuating coastal areas before a hurricane makes landfall. Where people hang out in open garages drinking beer and grilling on the bar-b-queue during severe weather events to keep an eye out for tornadoes. Staying home from work or school because there’s a few inches of snow on the roads since nobody plows the roads, including the interstates. Tropical downpours so heavy that you can’t see past the hood of your car and sometimes nothing past the windshield glass. Where a late afternoon ‘Patio Pounder” (localized thunderhead collapse) will dump 1–2″ of rain in 20–30 minutes to cause flooding a short distance away where the ground is bone dry.The south is basically 'country.' Dirt roads and back roads are common. There are long trips between gas stations and many back roads( in some places) Yes it rains a lot so have your 4 wheel drive ready. Don't worry if your truck gets stuck in the mud or you run short of gas and break down. They will help you( if they see you).They are very conservative. No they are not all Trumpets but even the most liberal southerner is very conservative. On Sundays they go to church, no exceptions. They work and encourage the children to go to school. They take care of each other and each others children. They know their neighbors and neighborhood. The churches usually are staples in the neighborhood especially during times of disasters.As far as I am concerned, the confederate flag holds a racist meaning and you will see it flying across the deep south where some southerners hold it as a symbol of pride aand heritage and 150 years after the war it is a symbol of serious contention. Its not uncommon to see it and the American flag flying proudly at someone's home or on their car.And visit Savannah and Charleston: Fabulous, unlike anywhere in the USA. Savannah’s old downtown is situated around a series of squares. Visit the Mercer - Williams house on Bull St. Visit the antebellum mansions of a vanished culture.Visit the Graveyards around New Orleans. They are often featured in movies, but movies are not the real thing. It is best to go with a guide who will explain how the tombs are utilized.Finally, the Civil War was fought with rare exception all over the South. The Battlefields are heartbreaking but very moving to visit. So are Southern graveyards, which go back to the beginning of our Country.Criticism ObservationsI hear a lot of criticism about the South from Northerners on my e-mail distribution, especially those from the New York Metro area, and most especially those friends and co workers who worked in Manhattan that I stay in touch with.When Bettie and I visited our old home in Middletown, NY a few weeks ago, we heard complaints about the South from friends in our church who visited there recently and experienced nasty Southern attitudes not found in Middletown, some comments were racial, some were from the political right trash talking Obama, and much that showed how totally uninformed some people were.Yes, the North is politically liberal compared to the conservative South, but my friends thought many Southern opinions are based on some very strange and incorrect conclusions of fact. The mess the USA is in has been around and growing for more than thirty years and has to do with the globalization of the economy and lack of investment in the USA, and the biggest culprit these days being the Republican party for its “do nothing,” say “no,” even forget the good of the country and do anything to defeat Obama, style of politics - at least that is the way most Northerners understand the Southern problem.My friends were also confused on the dichotomy, the Bible Belt that is so intolerant and lacking the compassion for their fellow man, they expected more from religious people. There were some bad stories too, including Ku Klux Klan types wearing T-shirts and mouthing off their hate of Jews, Negroes and Yankees. To many Northerners, the South is considered a white mans enclaves of right wing politics. My old church members didn’t like what they heard and decided never to move there.Here is a comment from on of my friends who lived in New Jersey and moved to North Carolina and now regret it:Quote: I sure do miss NJ. Quick access by rail to New York and Philly. Lots of Educated people who actually work at real professions and know what is going on in the world. Great ethnic food from "real" supermarkets and restaurants. Sports other than NASCAR! Sidewalks! Delis! The Jersey Shore. Bars, juke joints, dance clubs, where neighbors can hang together and get to know each other. In other words, civilization!Too many Southerners are safely content only while sitting in their back yards, drinking warm beer and talking about deer hunting and NASCAR while they pick their noses and bitch about government, taxes, gays, and everything else that they are ignorant about and afraid of (Mexicans, Europeans, Muslims, Yankees, Blacks, women they're not related to and therefore cannot have sex with), etc. I've met hundreds of North Carolinians who've never been outside the County, yet they claim to know everything there is to know about the world. I feel sorry for them. They never have had a life. New Jersey is an expensive place to live, because it's a great place to live and I wish I was still there. End quote . . .Since moving South, I have heard a neverending charade of hateful comments about New York coming from Southerners who regard the Big Apple as sin incarnate. It’s more than a cultural war between two geopolitical sections of the country with very different views of the world, it is a clash of ideas and life styles, one conforming and the other freedom loving, that I am sure will be reflected in the ballot box.Will it ever end?