class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">XIV.—

THE SOUTHERN SOUTH

INTRODUCTION

The keynote to which intelligent spirits respond most quickly in the United States is Americanism; no nation is more conscious of its own existence and its importance in the universe, more interested in the greatness, the strength, the pride, the influence, and the future of the common country. Nevertheless, any observer passing through all the parts of the United States would discover that the Union is made up not only of many states but of several sections—an East, a Middle West, a Far West, and a South. Of these four regions the three which adhere most strongly to each other and have least consciousness of rivalry among themselves are often classed together as “The North,” and they are set in rivalry against “The South,” because of a tradition of opposing interests, commercial and political, which culminated in the Civil War of 1861, and is still felt on both sides of the line.

That the South is now an integral and inseparable part of the Union is proved by a sense of a common blood, a common heritage, and a common purpose, which is as lively in the Southern as in the Northern part of the Union. The dominant English race stock is the same in both sections: in religion, in laws, in traditions, in expectation of the future, all sections of the United States are closer together than, for instance, the three components of the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Whatever the divergence between Southerners and Northerners at home, once outside