Thread: The North’s Economic & Ideological War Against the South

The generally negative image of the South in today’s US media is nothing new. Neither is the economic exploitation of Southerners and the South’s resources. As author Frank Conner explains in the following excerpt taken from pages 15-16 of his book The South Under Siege 1830-2000, anti-Southern elements in the Northeast have been doing essentially the same thing for two hundred years:

Because of geography-based economic differences, and racially-based ideological differences that were reinforced by geography, the North and the South grew steadily apart from the time their respective colonies were first established.

The New Englanders harbored a special grudge for the South, which had welcomed the despised Celts. Northerners travelling in the South on business resented deeply the easygoing-yet-aristocratic mien of the planters, who often made them feel inferior; but they could not openly express that resentment without appearing ridiculous. Thus they focused their resentments upon the transplanted Celts, whom they considered to be what today would called “trailer trash.” They believed the entire South to be unforgivably lazy and unbusinesslike. It was unthinkable to those Northerners to have to share the North American continent with the languid, superior planters and the hated transplanted Celts, without conquering and ruling them. And so the Northerners did the next-best thing.

Finish the story at: The North’s economic & ideological war against the South | Southern Nationalist Network

Today, I do not think their is a true southerner, what I mean by this is a family who has been here since the civil war and still owns that farm, etc, who doesn't wish the south could have succeeded during that time. The riches we had were beyond comparison at the time. We knew how to become rich, use our resources correctly and prosper. It's hard not to visit our battlefields and not habor a wee bit of resentment, especially if you live in a large city in the south. If you know what I mean!

I was always taught that the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about the federal government wanting our cotton and cotton export riches. Go visit savannah Georgia and you can see the riches of the cotton industry at that time, the cotton warehouses where huge and massive for that era. Actually can bring tears knowing what we know today and what the south has become...

But I try to hold on to our culture as much as I can.