Mississippi's Economy Rated 47th

[Ivory Lee Spurlock]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

Part of Texas is definitely Southern ... maybe a Houston/Dallas line, east. The rest is more southwestern. It's a big state.

South Carolina is about as Southern as you can get.

The real debate is ... are DC, Maryland, and West Va Southern? The Census Bureau considers them to be.

Roughly, Interstate 35 from Dallas/Ft. Worth to San Antonio is where the South meets the southwest. I-35 pretty much follows the Old Chisom Trail, and the Balcones Escarpment is a few miles west of I-35 from San Antonio to Waco. There's flora and fauna that will grow west of 35, but not east. And to balance it out, there's flora and fauna that will grow east of 35, but not west. The Hill Country begins in West Austin. That's is where things starts to look more like the West than the South. The land gets scrubbier, the trees get shorter, you start to see more cactus and more mesquite trees, the towns begin to get further apart, more and more breath taking long distance scenery the further West you go until you get to the West side of the Hill Country, where the Great Plains begins..

Within 30 miles east of I-35 in Austin are the fast growing small towns of Bastrop, Elgin, Taylor, and Lockhart to the Southeast, and those towns feel Southern - maybe not quite as Southern as small towns in East Texas, but there's a definite Southern vibe in those towns. For one thing, you'll hear more Southern accents in and around those towns. The further east you go, the thicker the accent gets.

West of I-35 and West Austin in the Austin region are the fast growing small Hill Country towns of Dripping Springs, Fredericksburg, Marble Falls, Llano, Spicewood, and Burnet. Those towns look and feel more Western than Southern or Southwestern, in my opinion, that is. They would make good settings for a Western movie.

I think Maryland and Delaware feels more like Mid-Atlantic states than Southern states, even though they were both Border States and slave states. It's the same way most of Missouri feels more Midwestern than Southern. Missouri remained in the Union and was a slave state, but it still feels like the Midwest. It feels like you are smack-dab in the middle of the United States in Missouri.

If you regionalize the states by what side they were on during the Civil War, West Virginia would be a Yankee State. They seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union.

But if you want to categorize the states into regions, just by looking at the map, I would categorize West Virginia with the Mid Atlantic States, along with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, and maybe even Virginia and North Carolina.

[Listener2307]

Texas would be a bit more Southern if the Union had not closed the Mississippi River to traffic when Vicksburg fell in July, 1863. The fall of Vicksburg effectively cut Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas out of the war, and they did not participate very much between that time and the war's end in '65.
Before that time, those three states were a constant source of support for The Confederacy.


Before The Civil War Mississippi was one of the wealthiest of the states. in 1850, Natchez was the second wealthiest city in America - New York was wealthier. Natchez is down to about 15,000 people, now.

[Mississippi Alabama Line]

Originally Posted by Listener2307

Before The Civil War Mississippi was one of the wealthiest of the states. in 1850, Natchez was the second wealthiest city in America - New York was wealthier. Natchez is down to about 15,000 people, now.

Was that really due to the Civil War? I tend to think it was the decline of agriculture.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by Mississippi Alabama Line

Was that really due to the Civil War? I tend to think it was the decline of agriculture.

No, it was due to the Civil War. Agriculture came back toward the turn of the century, but Mississippi remained poor. The Delta was booming with people since it was all done by hand.
But Natchez never came back. The many mansions in Natchez were occupied by families who owned huge farms on both sides of the river. Some families owned up to a million acres, but almost none of it was in Natchez.
Many of the mansion owners were against the war. They knew that a war would destroy them. Then, when Farragut took New Orleans and the mouth of the river in '62 the market died; there was no longer any way to get crops down the river and to markets in Europe.
Without slaves the farms along the river in South Mississippi could no longer operate. The land was all lost and the mansions stood as they were in 1860. I talked to older people in Natchez who told me that as children they used to play in those old homes. Today, they are preserved and some are occupied.
Longwood still stands unfinished just as it was in 1861. It is octagonal in shape and 3 stories high. But in spite of the fact that the windows were never installed, it still stands strong with cypress planks on the floor still waiting for the installation of finished hardwood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwo...ghsmith_01.jpg

[Bobilee]

Originally Posted by Ivory Lee Spurlock

If you regionalize the states by what side they were on during the Civil War, West Virginia would be a Yankee State. They seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union.

There is some really bad history re: West Virginia that never seems to go away and die like it should. First of all, West Virginia did not "secede" from Virginia, it was broken off and stolen. Only 18,408 voters favored a new state, and the 50 counties that made up the new state had 79,515 voters. 24 of those counties, about 2/3's of the new state, voted for the Confederacy. West Virginia, according to the recent soldier count from Shepherd University's GT Moore Civil War Center, gave half of its available men to the Confederacy, it is the only border state that did not give most of its men to the Union. The 4th WV Infantry, which has a monument at Vicksburg, was moslty NOT West Virginians, it was primarily recruited in Ohio as one of the many fake "Virginia" Union regiments, like the 2nd WV Infantry, the 5th WV Infantry, etc.


West Virginians were given no help from the Confederacy, who drained the counties of men and supplies while making almost no effort after 1861 to help them out. But people like to blame West Virginians for what happened. This is a map of the secession votes in what is now modern Appalachia, the ARC. A lot of those counties that voted against secession nevertheless when the war started gave men to the Confederacy far more than their votes would suggest.


West Virginia has the economy and profile of a banana republic because that was how it was made. One of the Unionists in Wheeling who helped create the state, originally from New York, Peter van Winkle, stated-"Well, sir, if these counties are inhabited by secessionists, some disposition has got to be made of them. They must be, as some remarks made by gentlemen here seem to point to - they must be exterminated by exile or death, or remain where they are. But in either case, sir, we want the territory. If they are going to remain upon it, still we want it."