Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on the plantation system and African chattel slavery, generally Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. East Texas, North Florida, the Arkansas Delta, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and the southern part of North Carolina are sometimes included as well.
Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the region experienced significant economic hardship and became a focal point of racial tension during the Reconstruction era, when emancipated enslaved people and Free Blacks asserted their rights, and, protected by the Federal government and Union Army, played significant roles in state governments. This incited the creation and growth of the Ku Klux Klan and similar white paramilitary groups. After Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877, the Federal government largely withdrew from the area, and the civil rights of African Americans were suppressed by "Jim Crow" laws for almost a century. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South.
Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production, along with rice in Georgia and South Carolina and sugar in Louisiana.
The Deep South is part of the highly religious, socially conservative Bible Belt and is currently a political stronghold of the Republican Party, after historically being one for the Democratic Party, the so-called "Solid South".
It is contrasted with the Mid-South and Tidewater region, as well as the Upper South and the border states, although considerable overlap between these regions exists, with the Mid-South including South Arkansas, the Arkansas Delta, and West Tennessee, and Appalachian Alabama and Georgia belonging to the Upper South.
Usage
The term "Deep South" is defined in various ways, but most definitions typically include the states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Texas and Florida are sometimes included as well, due to their proximity, coastlines with the Gulf of Mexico, histories of slavery, large African American populations, and their former status as part of the Confederate States of America.The eastern part of Texas is the westernmost extension of the Deep South, typically the area east of Dallas. North Florida is also part of the Deep South region, typically the area north of Ocala. West Tennessee is sometimes included due to its history of slavery, its prominence in cotton production during the antebellum period, and cultural similarity to the Mississippi Delta region. The Arkansas Delta is also sometimes included, though Arkansas is usually considered part of the Upper South.
Seven states seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War, which originally formed the Confederate States of America. In order of secession, they are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
The first six states to secede were those that held the largest percentage of slaves. Ultimately, the Confederacy included eleven states. A large part of the original "Cotton Belt" is sometimes included in Deep South terminology. This was considered to extend from the South Carolina Lowcountry to Georgia and North Florida, through the Gulf States as far west as East Texas, including West Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, and up the Mississippi embayment. Historically, sugar was the predominant crop in Louisiana, and rice was an important crop in South Carolina.
The inner core of the Deep South, characterized by very rich black soil that supported cotton plantations, is a geological formation known as the Black Belt. The Black Belt has since become better known as a sociocultural region; in this context it is a term used for much of the Cotton Belt, which had a high percentage of African-American slave labor. The Mississippi Delta has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth", because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history.
Origins
The colony of South Carolina was dominated by a planter class who initially migrated from the British Caribbean island of Barbados, and used the Barbados Slave Code of 1661 as a model to control and terrorize the African American slave population. Barbados provided a steady flow of sugar produced by slave labor to Europe and North America. The Georgia colony was founded by James Oglethorpe as a buffer state to defend the southern British colonies from Spanish Florida. Oglethorpe imagined a province populated by "sturdy farmers" who could guard the border; because of this, the colony's charter prohibited slavery. However, the ban on slavery was lifted by 1751, and the colony became a royal colony in 1752.At the time of the American Revolution, South Carolina and Georgia were majority African American, as indicated by the map on the right. In 1765, London philanthropist Dr. John Fothergill remarked on the cultural differences of the British American colonies southward from Maryland and those to the north, suggesting that Southerners were more similar to the people of the Caribbean than to the colonies to the north. A visiting French dignitary concurred in 1810 that American customs seemed "entirely changed" over the Potomac River, and that Southern society resembled those of the Caribbean.
Although often used in history books to refer to the seven states that originally formed the Confederacy, the term "Deep South" did not come into general usage until long after the Civil War ended. For at least the remainder of the 19th century, "Lower South" was the primary designation for those states. At the time of the American Civil War, Florida and Texas were sparsely populated and not fully settled, with Florida and Texas being the least-populated and third least-populated of the 11 Confederate states, respectively.
When "Deep South" first began to gain mainstream currency in print in the middle of the 20th century, it applied to the states and areas of South Carolina, Georgia, southern Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, northern Louisiana, West Tennessee, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas, all historical areas of cotton plantations and slavery. This was the part of the South many considered the "most Southern." In 1939, Florida was described as "still very largely an empty State," with only North Florida largely settled until after World War II.
Later, the general definition expanded to include all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as often taking in bordering areas of Eastern Arkansas, West Tennessee, East Texas and North Florida. In its broadest application, the Deep South is considered to be "an area roughly coextensive with the old cotton belt, from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina, west into East Texas, with extensions north and south along the Mississippi."
Early economics
The Deep South is generally associated historically with cotton production. The 11 Confederate States, including the Deep South, were overwhelmingly rural. New Orleans, Louisiana was the only populous city in the Confederacy during the Civil War.After the Civil War, the region was economically poor. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, a small fraction of the white population composed of wealthy landowners, merchants and bankers controlled the economy and, largely, the politics. Most white farmers were poor and had to do manual work on their farms to survive. As prices fell, farmers' work became harder and longer because of a change from largely self-sufficient farms, based on corn and pigs, to the growing of a cash crop of cotton or tobacco. Cotton cultivation took twice as many hours of work as raising corn. The farmers lost their freedom to determine what crops they would grow, ran into increasing indebtedness, and many were forced into tenancy or into working for someone else. Some out-migration occurred, especially to Texas, but over time, the population continued to grow and the farms were subdivided smaller and smaller. Growing discontent helped give rise to the Populist movement in the early 1890s. It represented a sort of class warfare, in which the poor farmers sought to gain more of an economic and political voice.
Distinct from neighboring regions
By 1850, the term "Cotton States" was in common use, and the differences between the Deep South and Upland South were recognized. A key difference was the Deep South's plantation-style cash crop agriculture, using the forced labor of enslaved African Americans on large farms while plantation owners tended to live in towns and cities. This system of plantation farming was originally developed in the Caribbean West Indies and introduced to the United States in South Carolina and Louisiana, from where it spread throughout the Deep South, although there were local exceptions wherever conditions did not support the system. The sharp division between town and country, the intensive use of a few cash crops, and the high proportion of slaves, all differed from the Upland South.The Tidewater region, encompassing the Chesapeake Bay and Eastern North Carolina, stands out as different from both the Deep South and Upland South. Its history of slavery originated in Virginia and predated the Caribbean plantation model, relying on tobacco as a cash crop from the start. Tidewater had few urban centers, instead establishing multiple markets along tributaries. Cotton and rice operations were large and factory-like, while tobacco profits hinged on skilled, careful, and efficient labor units.
Despite being the southernmost part of the continental United States, South Florida is not considered part of the Deep South. It has a tropical climate and high levels of migration from the Caribbean and Latin America, particularly in the densely populated Miami metropolitan area.