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All cities being discussed that have an Edgar Allen Poe House/Museum, raise your hand.
I went to the Edgar Allen Poe house in Richmond about this time last year. My wife is a huge fan, so we drove to Richmond for the weekend. I've never been the his home here in Baltimore.
I went to the Edgar Allen Poe house in Richmond about this time last year. My wife is a huge fan, so we drove to Richmond for the weekend. I've never been the his home here in Baltimore.
I get what you're saying, but what I'm saying, southern states have those characteristics as well. Anything that people are using to make Baltimore not southern can be said as, "Baltimore has/does that too, but that just means that (insert whatever) is just something that the south has/does as well." The south may have been mostly rural, but the south also had urban industrial cities as well. That shouldn't be a knock on Baltimore's southerness.
I'm curious now: what were the industries in Richmond other than tobacco pre-Civil War?
But while I'm here, when did Bethlehem Steel open Sparrows Point? As I noted before, that's heavy industry, something that only one other city in the (former) Confederacy had, and that city didn't exist prior to the Civil War. It may well be that Birmingham predates Baltimore as a steelmaking center.
I might, however, also remind you that I grew up in one of the border states, the only slave state north of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude west of the Mississippi (the line above which no slave states were permitted in the Louisiana Territory per the Missouri Compromise). Missouri also has some "Southernness" about it, and its western border was a hotbed of pro-Confederate sentiment in the years running up to the Civil War (which is why all of the Civil War battles that took place on Missouri soil occurred in that part of the state). Yet even most Kansas Citians object to those who characterize the entire state as Southern, and St. Louisans even more so.
And we've already reached something of a consensus here that, distance and differences in the character of the housing stock aside, St. Louis has at least as strong a claim to being "the city most like Baltimore" as Philadelphia does. In terms of age, the two cities are also comparable: Baltimore is about 35 years older than St. Louis. (Philadelphia predates Baltimore by about 40 years.)
Edited to add: But I think Mutiny77 may have his finger on the central point: cities were largely considered necessary evils in the antebellum Southern economy and culture, both of which were plantation-based. Baltimore, being a large city before the war, seems in that respect not truly Southern, even if it is in a state where Southern culture dominated but did not prevail when it came to the secession question. (Third verse of "Maryland, My Maryland," anyone?)
Baltimore was the home and origin point of the first railroad in the United States.
Railroads were not nonexistent in the South, but they were less developed there when the war broke out. (Of course, one of the Southern cities that rose after the war was the small town located where several railroads terminated in central Georgia. And there's no denying Atlanta's Southernness.)
I get what you're saying, but what I'm saying, southern states have those characteristics as well. Anything that people are using to make Baltimore not southern can be said as, "Baltimore has/does that too, but that just means that (insert whatever) is just something that the south has/does as well." The south may have been mostly rural, but the south also had urban industrial cities as well. That shouldn't be a knock on Baltimore's southerness.
The historic South had very few urban industrial cities because its economy was based on slave labor. New Orleans, Louisville, Richmond, Baltimore, and for all intents and purposes, St. Louis was the fifth with Charleston ranking last and having never reached a level of industrialization as those. For the most part, they were the exceptions, on the fringes of the region with significant influences and interactions from neighboring regions or, in New Orleans' case, nearby countries. They weren't historically regarded as the standard for what's Southern; even Charleston, whose Southernness today is not in dispute, was founded as a haven of religious pluralism and tolerance. The city shocked the hell out of visitors during antebellum era who described it much like first-time visitors to Atlanta today: "Black people are EVERYWHERE!" (It was one of a small handful of majority Black cities before the Great Migration). The few cities in the South were full of all of the things the ruling planter class loathed: free Blacks, enslaved skilled Blacks with a measure of autonomy, socialization across racial/class lines, immigrants, free labor, educational and cultural amenities, religious diversity, etc. And on top of that, Baltimore was already borderline Southern geographically; PA is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. And for the past 75 years at least, it is very obvious that Baltimore has aligned itself with its Bos-Wash neighbors primarily; furthermore DC and all of its suburban transplants just to the south of Baltimore puts it the city in a bubble of sorts that isolates it from the larger South with PA a few miles away.
At the end of the day, if you're always having to defend Baltimore as Southern, then that by itself should give you pause.
Once again, the Mason-Dixon Line has historically served as a figurative dividing line between North and South.
That's the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.
The Battle of Gettysburg is considered the only major Civil War battle to have been fought in the North for this reason.
True. That's why many older individuals by default think of Maryland (and DC) as being in the South, because of the Mason-Dixon line. For years that was the default line of demarcation, irrespective of the Census classifying Maryland as Southern.
In modern times regions have grown and merged (i.e. Bos- Wash corridor), so the North-South divide is more fluid. Even with places like Raleigh-Durham growing (which doesn't resemble historic southern culture), it's becoming even more fluid.
*Although, to be completely honest, outside of Acela travel, Bos-Wash corridor is more of a place on paper. Boston and DC have nearly no connection. They are 7 hours away. It's too macro level to have any tangible feel to it. I am originally from MD and my family still lives there. When I am in MD, there is no connection at all to NYC or Boston (or even Philly). You can feel a connection to Baltimore, but that is it. The Bos-Wash corridor is really something that is only in name, and at a person-level, it has no real meaning. A person from Boston does not feel that they share a region with DC. The only time it has any meaning to an individual person is if they hop on the Acela.
Outside of C-D, you never even hear it really mentioned by an average person. On this site, it gets mentioned by a lot of DC people because it gives them a connection to the Northeast. Most Boston, NYC, and Philly people on this site never mention the Bos-Wash corridor.
So how do you explain the US Census classifying Baltimore as Southern? Should the Census and all of its statistics we use also be discussed in the Paranormal thread?
Saying that Baltmore is a Southern City is not the same as saying it has Southern characteristics. Nobody would confuse Baltimore with Birmingham, but Baltimore is classified as a Southern City by the US Census. Don't know what's paranormal about that.
Most Federal Agencies with bigger budgets and more influence than the Census have DC as the southern most anchor of the Northeast Corridor. Here's another link from wikepedia. LOL
*Although, to be completely honest, outside of Acela travel, Bos-Wash corridor is more of a place on paper. Boston and DC have nearly no connection. They are 7 hours away. It's too macro level to have any tangible feel to it. I am originally from MD and my family still lives there. When I am in MD, there is no connection at all to NYC or Boston (or even Philly). You can feel a connection to Baltimore, but that is it. The Bos-Wash corridor is really something that is only in name, and at a person-level, it has no real meaning. A person from Boston does not feel that they share a region with DC. The only time it has any meaning to an individual person is if they hop on the Acela.
Outside of C-D, you never even hear it really mentioned by an average person. On this site, it gets mentioned by a lot of DC people because it gives them a connection to the Northeast. Most Boston, NYC, and Philly people on this site never mention the Bos-Wash corridor.
This makes perfect sense. Advances in transportation in the postwar era have probably reoriented no other metropolitan region as much as it has DC/Baltimore. Although it's less obvious in more established big cities like NYC, Philly, and Boston, the fact is that transportation, development, and migration patterns have been giving the country more of a megaregional feel fore the past several decades; shifts in state-level voting patterns since 2008 have been the most vivid example of this.
I'm curious now: what were the industries in Richmond other than tobacco pre-Civil War?
To answer you question, Richmond was one of the south's only industrial centers and especially a center for arms production, ordnance and ironworking prior to the Civil War. In particular, Richmond arms manufacturers had very lucrative contracts with the US government in Washington to the extent that it influenced Virginia's initial reluctance to join the confederacy before ultimately coming around. Without Richmond, the southern war effort would have been severely hampered. Richmond was chosen as capital, in part, because of its critical industrial capacity.
By 1860, Tredegar was the largest facility in the South [third-largest in the United States]. It played a significant role in the decision to relocate the capital of the Confederacy from Montgomery to Richmond. The facility produced iron plating for the first Confederate ironclad warship, the CSS Virginia. It also produced 1,100 artillery pieces during the war. This is about half of the Confederate’s total domestic production. Tredegar also manufactured railroad steam locomotives.
Tredegar survived the war but never made the transition to steel production and lost out at that economic pathway for growth in the post Civil War years. Richmond was also heavily vested in textile manufacture and in 1869 Richmond was the largest flour milling center in the United States (even after destruction of its largest mill, Gallego Mills, the largest in the world at that time). Ergo, Richmond was pretty unique in terms of its antebellum economics in comparison to other southern cities and even New Orleans at that time, which actually thrived more on agricultural, maritime commerce.
Edit: I also think it's worth pointing out that one of the major things largely missing from Richmond prior to the Civil War was significant immigration because sadly, most of these industries had been powered by industrial slavery. And as you can imagine, that didn't make the city particularly attractive.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,128 posts, read 7,547,924 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by personone
True. That's why many older individuals by default think of Maryland (and DC) as being in the South, because of the Mason-Dixon line. For years that was the default line of demarcation, irrespective of the Census classifying Maryland as Southern.
In modern times regions have grown and merged (i.e. Bos- Wash corridor), so the North-South divide is more fluid. Even with places like Raleigh-Durham growing (which doesn't resemble historic southern culture), it's becoming even more fluid.
*Although, to be completely honest, outside of Acela travel, Bos-Wash corridor is more of a place on paper. Boston and DC have nearly no connection. They are 7 hours away. It's too macro level to have any tangible feel to it. I am originally from MD and my family still lives there. When I am in MD, there is no connection at all to NYC or Boston (or even Philly). You can feel a connection to Baltimore, but that is it. The Bos-Wash corridor is really something that is only in name, and at a person-level, it has no real meaning. A person from Boston does not feel that they share a region with DC. The only time it has any meaning to an individual person is if they hop on the Acela.
Outside of C-D, you never even hear it really mentioned by an average person. On this site, it gets mentioned by a lot of DC people because it gives them a connection to the Northeast. Most Boston, NYC, and Philly people on this site never mention the Bos-Wash corridor.
Well, first off people in DC don't walk around talking or thinking about being connected to the NE. Because DC already IS connected, and more of a NEC epicenter than Boston, which is rarely talked about in the DMV. So you're right about the DC-Boston ends of it. But whether if it's by rail ridership or revenue, Boston is the fourth most connected city out of the "Northeast Big 4".
Top city pairs by ridership, 2019:
1. New York, NY - Washington, DC 226 mi
2. New York, NY - Philadelphia, PA 91 mi
3. Philadelphia, PA - Washington, DC 135 mi
4. Boston, MA - New York, NY 231 mi
5. Baltimore, MD - New York, NY 185 mi
6. BWI Airport, MD - New York, NY 196 mi
7. Back Bay, MA - New York, NY 230 mi
8. New York, NY - Wilmington, DE 116 mi
9. New York, NY - Providence, RI 188 mi
10. Baltimore, MD - Washington, DC 41 mi
Top city pairs by revenue, 2019:
1. New York, NY - Washington, DC 226 mi
2. New York, NY - Philadelphia, PA 91 mi
3. Boston, MA - New York, NY 231 mi
4. Philadelphia, PA - Washington, DC 135 mi
5. Baltimore, MD - New York, NY 185 mi
6. BWI Airport, MD - New York, NY 196 mi
7. Back Bay, MA - New York, NY 230 mi
8. New York, NY - Wilmington, DE 116 mi
9. New York, NY - Providence, RI 188 mi
10. Newark, NJ - Washington, DC 216 mi
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