# When did southern patriotism become part of the culture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 28, 2015, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196 "2015-03-28T11:34:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2015, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/21 "2015-04-07T04:28:45Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Now stop being coy and either make your point clear with an actual argument or back off. It took me a while to parse his claim, but I think he was claiming that the US had a place in world culture before WWII. Not a dominant place like today, but a place nonetheless. As this was tangential to your argument and difficult to evaluate at this level of generalization, I shrugged. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2015, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/22 "2015-04-07T04:48:57Z")
Hasn’t patriotism been described as “the last refuge of a scoundrel”? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/23 "2015-04-08T01:37:02Z")
> [@ZurBob](#): > > My point has been clear since my initial reply to your post. Any coy aspect involved is a figment of your imagination. Rather than get into a snide, one-liner sniping contest, why do you not simply explain your post? I have no idea what you were claiming was in error and I suspect that many others share my confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/24 "2015-04-09T00:28:52Z")
According to the Virginia journalist and author Florence King, the rest of the nation was very surprised at the way Southerners flocked to the flag (and to the military recruiting stations) during the Spanish-American War, the first large-scale American military conflict since the Civil War. I don’t know what her source was, though. ---
**Author:** ![ZurBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/71e660/32.png) [@ZurBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZurBob)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/25 "2015-04-09T00:44:35Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Cite? One cite I would offer of significant import to this discussion: The American Civil War. A grander display of overt patriotism is unimaginable. As a counterpoise, why do you require no cite to the contrary? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/26 "2015-04-09T06:16:29Z")
> [@ZurBob](#): > > Ahem… Perhaps after WWII America became the DOMINANT force worldwide, but in context of fact, this notion is untrue. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Cite? > [@ZurBob](#): > > One cite I would offer of significant import to this discussion: The American Civil War. A grander display of overt patriotism is unimaginable. > > As a counterpoise, why do you require no cite to the contrary? Generally the person making the claim is the one who inherits the burden of proof. **Exapno Mapcase** : In light of the above exchange, I retract my interpretation of gogo’s presentation. I have no idea where he’s going with this. Taking his last comment on its own though, it seems that he agrees with your earlier characterization of southern opinion. ---
**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/27 "2015-04-09T14:43:06Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > …The South hated this country so much at one point that they tried to form their own country… My experience in the South does not agree with this statement at all. Grew up in the South and had some relatives who were pretty big civil war buffs and had distant ancestors in the civil war. Southerners tend to have a lot of pride in their heritage and any animosity (or any left after several generations) was towards “the North” at the time, not “the U.S.A.” Now it’s more of a minor sibling rivalry for rivalry’s sake (sort of like Duke vs UNC). Southerners still tend to love a good fight, which I think is a result of the way they’ve honored their civil war heritage and always promoted themselves as semi-chivalrous. Chivalry is more/less inseparable from fighting (e.g. fight the good fight for the right reasons), so Southerns tend not to be pacifists, and consequently are fairly supportive of and well represented in the military. Of course the country is becoming more homogeneous, so Southern culture gets diluted over the decades just like every other culture. ---
**Author:** ![Potestas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@Potestas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Potestas)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/28 "2015-04-09T14:55:59Z")
The confederacy was not about a hate of country, it was about a hate of tyranny and the overreach of government a theme that continues to this day in a lot of southern political circles. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/29 "2015-04-09T15:28:32Z")
> [@Potestas](#): > > The confederacy was not about a hate of country, it was about a hate of tyranny and the overreach of government a theme that continues to this day in a lot of southern political circles. No, it was about slavery. Slaveowners were a minority in population, but they controlled the politics, the economy, and the culture. All their writing for decades before the war was about slavery, and the only tyranny they hated was the democracy of the North possibly outvoting them on the subject. Once the Confederacy started, the political system they put into place was oligarchic, thoroughly anti-democratic. They feared that if the common people were given a proportionate say some of the restrictions put up to guarantee slavery might be lessened in the future. I use as a cite [Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America](http://www.amazon.com/Look-Away-History-Confederate-America/dp/0743234995/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428592866&sr=1-1&keywords=a+history+of+the+confederate+states), by three-time Jefferson Davis Prize winner William C. Davis, the director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech. He treats the proposition that slavery and nothing else was the cause of the war the way climate scientists treat global warming. It’s real and the evidence is overwhelming except to the willfully blind. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/30 "2015-04-09T15:49:23Z")
> [@Potestas](#): > > The confederacy was not about a hate of country, it was about a hate of tyranny and the overreach of government a theme that continues to this day in a lot of southern political circles. It was about slavery and white supremacism, according to many of the founding documents of the Confederate States of America and individual states’ secession documents. ---
**Author:** ![Potestas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@Potestas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Potestas)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/31 "2015-04-09T15:53:43Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > No, it was about slavery. Slaveowners were a minority in population, but they controlled the politics, the economy, and the culture. All their writing for decades before the war was about slavery, and the only tyranny they hated was the democracy of the North possibly outvoting them on the subject. > > Once the Confederacy started, the political system they put into place was oligarchic, thoroughly anti-democratic. They feared that if the common people were given a proportionate say some of the restrictions put up to guarantee slavery might be lessened in the future. > > I use as a cite [Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America](http://www.amazon.com/Look-Away-History-Confederate-America/dp/0743234995/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428592866&sr=1-1&keywords=a+history+of+the+confederate+states), by three-time Jefferson Davis Prize winner William C. Davis, the director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech. He treats the proposition that slavery and nothing else was the cause of the war the way climate scientists treat global warming. It’s real and the evidence is overwhelming except to the willfully blind. It absolutely was not exclusively about slavery, it was about states rights and the rights of states to secede from the union at any given point in time. At the time Southern representation had the overwhelming majority within the Congress, abolishing slavery would not be able to happen via a Congressional action and Lincoln knew this! Why else would Lincoln unilaterally go around Congress with his call up of a 75,000 man army? Only Congress has the authority to raise an Army together. Why else would Lincoln suspend habeus corpus? Abraham Lincoln in fact represents one of the biggest tyrants in American history despite the rosy painting of his legacy in the history books of our youth. Make no mistake, slavery was an element in fact a crucial element but it was not exclusively the sole cause for war or even secession. State sovereignty is what was at stake here and the right for states to form their own government. If states desire to secede they should have that ability to do so, slavery would have died out very quickly within the South and many writings from the time period show evidence of it beginning to decline in the south. It would decline simply because of the same reasons for why the south ultimately lost the war and that is the lack of industrialization in the south. The south was largely an agrarian society, if left alone by Lincoln they would have either adapted themselves or would have attempted to rejoin the Union at a later date in time. Instead Lincoln took it upon himself to completely override the Constitution and force the states to remain in the union, those are the actions of a tyrant not a peacemaker and not a rational man. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/32 "2015-04-09T16:04:11Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > > > … Modern-style patriotic displays didn’t exist most of the time because America didn’t have a place in world culture until recently, after WWII… > > > [@gogogophers](#): > > > > Ahem… Perhaps after WWII America became the DOMINANT force worldwide, but in context of fact, this notion is untrue. > > Which particular notion do you find untrue? I’m going to guess the notion that American didn’t have a place in world culture until recently, after WWII. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘culture,’ but America was an important player on the world stage, and since James Monroe declared herself the biggest gorilla in the western hemisphere. Teddy Roosevelt built the largest navy in the world and his US was self-proclaimed cop of the world. At the end of WWI, the US had one of the key roles - arguably the top dog role - in the peace treaty, and the League of Nations, while perhaps naive, was given respect because of whose idea it was. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/33 "2015-04-09T16:19:39Z")
> [@Potestas](#): > > It absolutely was not exclusively about slavery, it was about states rights and the rights of states to secede from the union at any given point in time. Any “states rights” were supposed “rights” to slavery. > [@](#): > > At the time Southern representation had the overwhelming majority within the Congress, abolishing slavery would not be able to happen via a Congressional action and Lincoln knew this! Why else would Lincoln unilaterally go around Congress with his call up of a 75,000 man army? Only Congress has the authority to raise an Army together. Why else would Lincoln suspend habeus corpus? Abraham Lincoln in fact represents one of the biggest tyrants in American history despite the rosy painting of his legacy in the history books of our youth. Armed men attacked US soldiers at Fort Sumter. It’s reasonable to response to force with force. > [@](#): > > Make no mistake, slavery was an element in fact a crucial element but it was not exclusively the sole cause for war or even secession. It was by far the largest factor – we only need to read the centrality of slavery and white supremacism in the Confederacy’s _founding documents_. > [@](#): > > State sovereignty is what was at stake here and the right for states to form their own government. If states desire to secede they should have that ability to do so, slavery would have died out very quickly within the South and many writings from the time period show evidence of it beginning to decline in the south. It would decline simply because of the same reasons for why the south ultimately lost the war and that is the lack of industrialization in the south. The south was largely an agrarian society, if left alone by Lincoln they would have either adapted themselves or would have attempted to rejoin the Union at a later date in time. Instead Lincoln took it upon himself to completely override the Constitution and force the states to remain in the union, those are the actions of a tyrant not a peacemaker and not a rational man. No, United States soldiers were attacked and shot at by armed men. Armed men from the South started the war, Lincoln just chose to fight it. If the South didn’t want a war, they _shouldn’t have attacked US soldiers_. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/34 "2015-04-09T16:41:21Z")
> [@Potestas](#): > > It absolutely was not exclusively about slavery, it was about states rights and the rights of states to secede from the union at any given point in time. And what was the states’ right they were so insistent to exercise? > [@](#): > > At the time Southern representation had the overwhelming majority within the Congress, abolishing slavery would not be able to happen via a Congressional action and Lincoln knew this! Why else would Lincoln unilaterally go around Congress with his call up of a 75,000 man army? [Because South Carolina bombarded and seized Fort Sumter. And his order was legal - it was only for 3 months.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Lincoln%27s_75,000_Volunteers) > [@](#): > > Why else would Lincoln suspend habeus corpus? Well, it wasn’t because of your claim of southern representation in congress. Southern states were largely no longer represented in congress. > [@](#): > > Make no mistake, slavery was an element in fact a crucial element but it was not exclusively the sole cause for war or even secession. State sovereignty is what was at stake here and the right for states to form their own government. If states desire to secede they should have that ability to do so [James Madison would like a word with you.](http://www.law.yale.edu/news/1850.htm) [A couple, in fact.](http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s14.html) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/35 "2015-04-09T17:26:59Z")
I have little to add to the above. The only state’s right at issue was the right of the state to protect slavery. Nothing else truly mattered; nothing else would have risen to the level of war. And I need to remind you that six states seceded \*before \*Lincoln’s inauguration. They had a convention, wrote a constitution that was designed purely to protect slavery, elected a president and vice-president (i.e., the convention did: the people were not offered a say), and prepared for war. Davis took office on February 18, a month before Lincoln did. Lincoln merely responded to a direct act of war. If anything you said about the South was true, then they would have negotiated government to government. They didn’t. They wanted war, and it had to start in South Carolina because they were the hottest “fire-eaters” who would settle for nothing less. If you want to see examples of people who cannot be described as a “reasonable man” read the statements made by the Southern aristocracy before the war, during the creation of the Confederacy, and afterward. They are frightening. Saying that Lincoln was responsible for the Confederacy or the Civil War is at the moon-hoaxing level of argument. Saying that slavery was in decline and would have faded away naturally is similar to climate denial. These arguments have been put to rest by modern scholarship. The facts do not support them. ---
**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/36 "2015-04-09T17:34:44Z")
Bringing it back to the OP, regardless of whether the war was over slavery or states rights,(which will always be debated as evidenced in this thread) neither indicates a hatred of the U.S. as a country, so it’s moot for this discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/37 "2015-04-09T18:42:08Z")
The Civil War was plainly about slavery. It is wrong to deny this. However, it is equally wrong to say this was the _only_ issue between the sections. In legal terms, slavery was the proximate cause of the split, but not the only cause. The tariff issue was one of long standing, and is also mentioned in secession documents (though not with the same primacy as slavery). And in fact, the doctrine of “states’ rights” had previously been invoked in response to tariffs, during the [Nullification Crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis). Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison invoked states’ rights in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. ETA: To be clear, I am not a fan of “states’ rights” nor a defender of the Confederacy. It’s just that I am equally not a fan of bad history. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/38 "2015-04-09T18:54:26Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > The Civil War was plainly about slavery. It is wrong to deny this. However, it is equally wrong to say this was the _only_ issue between the sections. In legal terms, slavery was the proximate cause of the split, but not the only cause. > > The tariff issue was one of long standing, and is also mentioned in secession documents (though not with the same primacy as slavery). And in fact, the doctrine of “states’ rights” had previously been invoked in response to tariffs, during the [Nullification Crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis). Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison invoked states’ rights in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. > > ETA: To be clear, I am not a fan of “states’ rights” nor a defender of the Confederacy. It’s just that I am equally not a fan of bad history. This will be my last hijack on this issue. However, the tariff question was a matter of the south having a plantation economy dependent on slavery while the north had a growing industrial base. Tariffs were not a philosophic issue. They were a purely economic issue based on the insistence of keeping a slave-based economy. There was the issue of slavery and issues that were issues only because of slavery. You cannot make the case that in 1860 non-slavery issues mattered. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/39 "2015-04-09T19:40:54Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > They were a purely economic issue based on the insistence of keeping a slave-based economy. > > There was the issue of slavery and issues that were issues only because of slavery. You cannot make the case that in 1860 non-slavery issues mattered. The tariff would have been an issue whether the South’s crops were harvested by slaves or by free men. It was an issue between a manufacturing economy and an agricultural economy. (And note that the South continued to have an agricultural economy for nearly a century after the slaves were freed.) In essence, the tariff from the perspective of the North was a way of bolstering their manufacturing economy. Put tariffs on foreign goods to make them more expensive than goods made in the US. But to the South it looked like their section of the country was getting taxed for the sole benefit of the North, while they were being deprived of relatively cheap imports from England and elsewhere. It was a very real issue, one which caused the Nullification Crisis decades before the Civil War. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196/40 "2015-04-09T20:37:18Z")
> [@Potestas](#): > > The confederacy was not about a hate of country, it was about a hate of tyranny and the overreach of government a theme that continues to this day in a lot of southern political circles. No, it was about a love of slavery and being superior to _somebody._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-southern-patriotism-become-part-of-the-culture/716196.md?page=3)