George Washington also hated slavery and so it as a systemic evil, so much so that he ordered all of his slaves freed upon his death or the death of his wife, whichever should come the latter. In his will he requested that his wife free her slaves (inherited from her first husband and from her father* and thus distinct from Washington’s slaves) as well, but (probably at the urging of her grandchildren/heirs), she did not. Washington bequeathed land, tools and pensions to his manumitted slaves in his will as well.
**An odd similarity twixt the first and third First Ladies (if Martha Jefferson can be called a First Lady [having died before her husband was elected]): both were Virginia born heiresses, both were wealthy widows with two children, and both brought as part of their dowry slaves who were half-siblings. In Martha Jefferson’s case one of the half-siblings (Sally Hemings) became the concubine of her husband many years later, while in Martha Washington’s case a half-sister became the concubine of her son [the slave’s half-nephew]).
I’ve compared Southern history to a really good dish of liver, onions and gravy: spicy, delicious, fattening and dripping in blood. However, there really is a “New South” as evidenced by the attitudes of college kids. Politically we’re fucked up, but it is not the lower class Pentecostals who supported Bush nearly as much as the middle and upper classes- the lower classes were as likely to be pro-Kerry, and as for the gay marriage initiatives- they were voted down in every state where they were on the ballot, not just the south.
Things often ignored when making generalizations about the South:
—The worst race riots in U.S. history were as apt to occur outside the south as inside (Tulsa [mentioned previously], L.A. (Watts riots, the Rodney King riots), Omaha, etc.
—The KKK had a much more powerful political powerbase in the Midwest than it ever had in the South
—Justice Hugo Black, one of the most liberal minds on the SCotUS during the Civil Rights era, was an Alabamian (and a former Klan member)
—The same court orders that integrated schools in the south were also used to integrate schools in the north and west (including in Hyannisport MA) at the same time
Racism, stupidity, demagoguery, xenophobia and other cultural cancers have never been any more exclusively southern than they are exclusively American. I’m convinced that if you moved into the swamps of Louisiana, the glacier villages above the Canadian shield, New York City or Baja California you’re going to find some very intelligent and open minded people who read and think and then a majority who are, to quote Ford Madox Ford, primarily stuff to fill graves. I definitely entertain notions of moving to a blue state at some point, but it has nothing to do with shame of southerners.
