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Maryland had great Confederate sympathies during the Civil War, as it was a slave state, and because Baltimore did much trading with Virginia via water transportation on the Chesapeake Bay. Many Marylanders fought for the Confederacy, and there are at least 4 "sons of confederate veterans" chapters in Maryland. The assassin John W. Booth was from Northern Maryland.
Some very old-time Washingtonians and Southern Marylanders still speak with non-rhotic (Southern) accents - but they have mostly died off, and nearly all area natives now speak with standard American accents. (I'm speaking just of white people, and not blacks). As mentioned above, the high cost of living, and its diverse ethnic groups, including strong Catholic and Jewish cultures, give Washington much more in common with the North than the South.
DC is no longer southern. The Mason- Dixon Line is an imaginary line that was drawn several hundred years ago. Culture more so than geography determines a places identity. DC is very urban, very diverse, and very ethnic. The infrastructure is very East Coast as opposed to what one would find in Charlotte and Atlanta.
Before WWII, DC was more southern in the sense that a small group of people controlled the social network of the city and the economics. Now, this is no longer the case.
DC has way more in common with Boston than Atlanta.
You nailed it. For most of its existence, Wash was definitely Southern. It's just been the past few decades where it has morphed into more of a Northern-type city. As you said, it was culture, not geography that transformed it. Hell, they had laws segregating the races up until the 1960s!
There is nothing southern about DC other than a few restaurants dating back to the pre WWII era. It is the East Coast in architechture, culture, and economics.
Washington, D.C. is notable for its number of buildings of neo-classical and European architecture.
Last edited by BigCityDreamer; 10-31-2010 at 07:12 PM..
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