Read on Twitter
Even during the revolution, the Southern mentality was quite different than that of the Yankees. Foremost, the idea of “leave us alone” or “don’t mess with us” is Southern in origin. The iconic Gadsden flag was designed by Continental Army General Gadsden of South Carolina.
In 1845 Florida became a state, Governor Moseley (a North Carolinian who was President James K Polk’s roommate at UNC) raised this flag reflecting the mindset. This Florida, the same one that joined the Confederacy, is unrecognizable to today’s Yankee/Latino-colonized state.
Other iconic flags reflect the Southerners’ contribution of the aesthetic quality and ‘texture’ of the revolution. The famous Moultrie flag came from South Carolina. All these seem quite different than the “join or die” rhetoric and New England pines flown up north.
Another thing worth noting was the intense monarchism/hierarchy of the South. While our history books paint him as an oaf, Cornwallis was right in believing that monarchy had stronger support in the Southern colonies. It just so happened that the support wasn’t strong ENOUGH.
After independence was won, the mentality divide still showed through painfully. Almost all of the delegates to the Constitutional convention in favor of ‘empire’: powerful central government, the legislature entirely proportional/directly elected, etc. were Yankees. By contrast,
Those that favored highly limited central government, bicameralism, an indirectly elected senate, were Southerners. This shows obviously in the “Virginia Plan” versus the “Connecticut Plan.” The compromise of that day was quite literally a compromise of north and South.
The anti-federalists versus the federalists was similarly a debate that coalesced between Southern agrarians and Northern urbanites. The archfederalist was Hamilton, a New Yorker obsessed with commerce, banking, and empire, while the archantifederalist was Thomas Jefferson,
decidedly opposite in his staunch libertarianism and reputation as the ultra-agrarian Virginian. Famous too was Yankee (Bostonian) John Adams’ desire to address the POTUS as “His Highness” while Virginian planter Washington refused for the simple ‘Mr. President.’
So what’s my point? This is a twitter thread so a bit of an simplification of history. Of course there were imperialist Southrons and antifederalist Yankees. But GENERALLY, the two societies were distinct from the start; their ARCHETYPES were so opposite as 2 separate nations.
The point is that much of the stereotypes of the South: rurality, provincialism/racism, widespread gun ownership, are the legitimate legacy of the ‘spirit of 1776’ and the founding era. The other parts of American society are Yankee urbanite empire taken to a grotesque evolution.
