I Have a Few Questions

[Mark MacKenzie]

I am curious to know when the actual differentiation between north and south came into being. Before the war, Yankees were New Englanders which may or may not have included Bostonites who were different from Massachusetts people, different from Philadelphians, not to mention New Yorkers. There were more millionaires in Thomaston, Maine, sea captains, than anywhere else in the country. They probably held some preconceived ideas about those frontier people way out west in Ohio and beyond. Washington, D.C. and Richmond were probably more alike in brick and mortar and in mindset than other cities, do you think?

I like the description in Evangeline of floating down the Mississippi River in what must have felt like a jungle, uninhabited.

Of course Vicksburg was an incredible world, New Orleans, Atlanta, all so different and I think prejudicial against each other too. Tennessee is actually three "Great States," west, middle, and east and so very different people. Most southerners don't include Florida as part of the south.

Now, Nashville is past the carpetbagger stage. Its rare to find someone native here and thats a question often asked, "when did you move to Nashville?"

But somehow this definitive categorization of Southerners and Northernors came about. They are all this. They are all that. Yankees were despised. Kentucky Yankees. Illinois Yankees. Michigan Yankees. Southerners were reviled. Virginians, Texans, Georgians, all, dare I say, scum.

Well, we've all grown up now and don't carry such awful generalizations, I do believe. Maybe the lesson to take away is to beware this, even though it seems to be human nature.