How the Bitter White Minority in the South Ended Up With Huge Power in Washington

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3. In college I read two books on the westward movement.

Both books were by the same author, but one was on the movement west, north of the Mason-Dixon line and Ohio River and the other on the movement west south of those points.

The key difference was who moved west and how. In the North the movement was from Puritan New England and to a lesser extent New York and Pennsylvania. Those settlers were looking for general farmland for wheat and corn corps. The first thing thet did when they moved into an area was to build a church, but the church was less religious then a general meeting place. In fact it was common practice for two christian denominations to share the same church and to hold meetings in that church that anyone could go to. In some places these churches were called community buildings, a name used in rural New England for rural town churches.

One of the key to the northern love west was the concentration on community more then the individual. You had parks, decent roads and other improvements that made the towns formed by such northerns nicer places to live. This is the area where you have barn raising parties, as neighbors came together to help one of they own build a new barn. Remember the barn was larger and more important then the house for such farmers.

The militia started out as a tight net group but quickly dissolved once the threat from Native Americans disappeared. As long as there was a Native American threat, the Northern Militia had a good military reputation. Once that threat was gone, the Northern Militia tended to decline rapidly. The militia was generally connected with the local church, even if the members of the militia were not if the church. In many small towns in the mid west the militia met on the town square, where the church was located. Other churches tended to be also located on the same square. The Catholic church tends NOT to be on the square for the simple reason Catholics tended to move to such towns long after they were settled.

On the other hand when it came to the South, separation of church and state was supreme. In the movement west, in the South, the first building built tended to be a taveran, to make money. The movement west was to get land to raise cotton and that included buying slaves. Helping a neighbor was a foreign thought to the people in that movement. Watching slaves so they do not escape was part of the movement. Chuches tend to be far away from the center of town, taverns tend to dominate the town centers. Very little local improvements. Even in the 1800s the differences in town settled by Northerns were starkly different from towns settled by Southerns. This was even true of towns where Northerns settled towns south of towns settled by Southerners. This is seen in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the whole state of Kentucky.

The Southern Militia, unlike the Northern Militia, had a bad military reputation for the main purpose of the Militia in the South was to stand guard at intersections to check on any African Americans who passed that intersection had permission of their owner or if a Freedman, was not involved in helping slaves escape. Thus had little actual military training (unlike Northern Militia who tended to drill In military manners on the town Square). So do to this tendency to be more guard organization then a military unit the Southern Militia had little military training, but instead developed a reputation as killers. When on "Patrol" these militiamen could beatu anyone they came in contact with, up to and including killing anyone. The state paid for any slave so killed, but it was beleived necessary to prevent slave revolts.

The above difference between the the Militia of the South and North shows a major difference between the North and South. The North concentrated on community activities, which included military preparation when there was a military threat. The South on how to make money including keeping the slaves from running away. Thus the Southern Militia stay active till the Civil War.

This settlement still affect the American South and North. In the North you see more support for community, in the South, how to keep African Americans "in they place". That was a Southern characteristic by 1700, and was carried westward and made more severe. It should have ended with the abolishment of slavery, but survived and expanded during segregation. Thus still alive and well to this day. Thus this view of African Americans by white Southerns survives to this day.