Is Missouri part of "The South"?

[Aisling]

Sorry, but those in KC have a drawl too....

Missouri is south of the Mason/Dixon line--it's still in the "south" in my book. I have never considered it a "Midwestern" state.

 

[dandave]

The Mason-Dixon line certainly does not extend across the entire US, for goodness sake. Please tell me that no one here actually thought it did?

 

[Plannin'Shannon]

I have just considered everything south of the Mason Dixon line "The South".

I realize I'm tardy to the party, but do you really consider everything south of Pennsylvania to be "the South"?

The Mason-Dixon line certainly does not extend across the entire US, for goodness sake. Please tell me that no one here actually thought it did?

I'm wondering the same thing...

 

[Minnesota!]

 

[Minnesota!]

Also:

The Mason-Dixon Line Divided the North and South

By Matt Rosenberg, About.com Guide

May 5 2010

Alhough the Mason-Dixon line is most commonly associated with the division between the northern and southern (free and slave, respectively) states during the 1800s and American Civil War-era, the line was delineated in the mid-1700s to settle a property dispute. The two surveyors who mapped the line, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, will always be known for their famous boundary.

In 1632, King Charles I of England gave the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, the colony of Maryland. Fifty years later, in 1682, King Charles II gave William Penn the territory to the north, which later became Pennsylvania. A year later, Charles II gave Penn land on the Delmarva Peninsula (the peninsula that includes the eastern portion of modern Maryland and all of Delaware).

The description of the boundaries in the grants to Calvert and Penn did not match and there was a great deal of confusion as to where the boundary (supposedly along 40 degrees north) lay. The Calvert and Penn families took the matter to the British court and England's chief justice declared in 1750 that the boundary between southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland should lie 15 miles south of Philadelphia. A decade later, the two families agreed on the compromise and set out to have the new boundary surveyed. Unfortunately, colonial surveyors were no match for the difficult job and two experts from England had to be recruited.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in Philadelphia in November 1763. Mason was an astronomer who had worked at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Dixon was a renowned surveyor. The two had worked together as a team prior to their assignment to the colonies.

After arriving in Philadelphia, their first task was to determine the exact absolute location of Philadelphia. From there, they began to survey the north-south line that divided the Delmarva Peninsula into the Calvert and Penn properties. Only after the Delmarva portion of the line had been completed did the duo move to mark the east-west running line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

They precisely established the point fifteen miles south of Philadelphia and since the beginning of their line was west of Philadelphia, they had to begin their measurement to the east of the beginning of their line. They erected a limestone benchmark at their point of origin.

Travel and surveying in the rugged "west" was difficult and slow going. The surveyors had to deal with many different hazards, one of the most dangerous to the men being the indigenous Native Americans living in the region. The duo did have Native American guides although once the survey team reached a point 36 miles east of the end point of the boundary, their guides told them not to travel any farther. Hostile residents kept the survey from reaching its end goal. Thus, on October 9, 1767, almost four years after they began their surveying, the 233 mile-long Mason-Dixon line had (almost) been completely surveyed.

Over fifty years later, the boundary between the two states along the Mason-Dixon line came into the spotlight with the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Compromise established a boundary between the slave states of the south and the free states of the north (however its separation of Maryland and Delaware is a bit confusing since Delaware was a slave state that stayed in the Union).

This boundary became referred to as the Mason-Dixon line because it began in the east along the Mason-Dixon line and headed westward to the Ohio River and along the Ohio to its mouth at the Mississippi River and then west along 36 degrees 30 minutes North.

The Mason-Dixon line was very symbolic in the minds of the people of the young nation struggling over slavery and the names of the two surveyors who created it will evermore be associated with that struggle and its geographic association.

 

[Aisling]

The Mason-Dixon line certainly does not extend across the entire US, for goodness sake. Please tell me that no one here actually thought it did?

That's why I at the comment!!

Golfgal, luv ya, but hold up the white flag now!

 

[dandave]

"About.com" articles are almost as good as Wikipedia articles, IMHO.

The Mason Dixon line never extended that far west. Here's a bit more reliable article, with maps:

http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/mason_dixon/

With Indians almost entirely displaced from the eastern states, the national debate focused on slavery and abolition, and whether new states entering the Union should be free or slave states. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 designated Mason and Dixon’s west line as the national divide between the “free” and “slave” states east of the Ohio River, and the line suddenly acquired new significance.

 

[Michelle67]

It isn't to me...but that's just my opinion.

On a side note, I have several times had the experience, while in Oklahoma where I have a lot of family, of being referred to as a "Yank." I always found this very confusing, since Washington wasn't even a state at the time of the Civil War, and for that matter neither was OK. I always feel like saying "You DO realize that neither of our states had a dog in that fight...right?"

 

[Imzadi]

Why are only the BLUE states the United States of America?

 

[Imzadi]

But this map says that Missouri was not a Confederate state during the Civil War:

 

[Jennasis]

It's the Lawnguyland accent.

It's the difference between AH (which is what the Dr. makes you say when you stick out your tongue) and AW (when you see something really cute.)

 

[Aristocath]

You can't use the Civil War to decide if a state is North or South. California was a state at that time and you don't say it is in the North.

 

[JayhawkMomma]

Wow! Who would have thought that if I drove less than 20 miles due east I'd travel to the south? : Missouri is most definately NOT a southern state. It's in the midwest, just like Kansas.

And I don't know anyone here who talks with a drawl. Most of us don't even talk with a twang. The midwestern accent is the preferred one for national news because we're the easiest to understand. I know NO ONE who says warsh or other twangish pronounciations and I've lived in the Kansas City area my entire life. My inlaws in southern MO do have a small twang but they don't drawl.

 

[Ciao Mickey]

Missouri is definitely not part of the south! A better question would be, is Miami part of the south????

No. Miami is anything but southern.

The farther north you go in Florida, the farther South you are.

 

[Ciao Mickey]

That is hysterical!

As to the original question, I find it interesting that so many people have different ideas.

I was born and raised in the DEEP South. As I see it - Missouri is NOT part of the South. We don't claim it and never have. Florida is also not part of the South. It's in a category of its own. Some people consider Texas part of the South but I think it is like Florida and more of in its own category as well.

GA is Southern (except for Atlanta which is really a Northern town smack dab in the middle of the South).

VA, KY, TN, NC, SC, GA, MS, AL are definitely part of the South. Louisiana is questionable since it is more Cajun than Southern.

Arkansas and Missouri are more Midwest than Southern.

We just moved to GA from MD where we lived about 10 miles from the real Mason-Dixon line. After living in MD, I can definitely say it is NOT part of the South. The Mason-Dixon line should be permanently relocated south of DC.

How do you not consider the panhandle of Florida as part of the South?

My mother was raised in W. Va. and everyone there has a southern accent. (Being from NJ, anyone not from the NYC metro area has a southern accent. )

To me, anything south of Virginia is part of The South. Alabama, Mississippi, etc. is "Deep South scary" (sorry, Easy Rider left a permanent impression).

Texas is not part of the South.

NJ is a divided state (north/south) and people in the southern half of the state have a weird accent.

 

[dandave]

Why are only the BLUE states the United States of America?

Because the country was divided into the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, hence the war.

 

[dandave]

How do you not consider the panhandle of Florida as part of the South?

I agree! I was born in SC, and I lived there until my mid twenties. I then moved to Georgia for 9 years, and am now in the Florida panhandle. This is the South. It's not the lovely, azalea growing, front porch swing sitting, South that I love, but it is the South. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

 

[Aisling]

No. Miami is anything but southern.

The farther north you go in Florida, the farther South you are.

 

[Imzadi]

Because the country was divided into the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, hence the war.

Maybe it's because I was taught about the war in a north state, (and history sometimes changes according to who tells it, i.e. the history of slaves is very different when told by Caucasians vs. when African Americans tell it,) or maybe because I learned about it a century & ions ago & my memory is faulty , but according to the NORTH, the Southern states were always considered part of the U.S.

But, the South, like wayward teenagers sometimes do, declared their separation and considered themselves a separate entity.

 

[mhsjax]

I personally have never known anyone from Florida who considered themselves to be in the South.

Of course, I have not met everyone who lives there. But I do have family in Orlando, Tampa, and Port Orange, and my mom lived in Miami for 3 years.



Well if we're going by accents, every state has a bit of California in them, because that accent has spread like wildfire. I remember being in Spartanburg at a bar, listening to a group of LOCAL college students who were at a Grateful Dead cover band show, with this CA accent, deadhead/stoner "accent", with South Carolina spread through it....possibly the strangest way of speaking I've ever heard, and that includes the South African accent!

Yu must not know any of my friends. I have quite a few that are born and raised in Florida, and you better believe we consider ourselves southern, and to be told otherwise is an insult to us. We will admit that there are way too many yankees down here, and will remind them when they complain about southerners driving that most people here are from the north, but we still do consider ourselves in the south. Also I do admit that we are in the Jacksonville area, so that is probably a big difference.