] Are Southerners mainly people who are trying very hard to
] be old-fashioned Northerners?
]
] The phenomenon seems to go back a long, long way, and it
] may have something to do with how the South got to be the
] Bible Belt. Two centuries ago, when New England was the
] Bible Belt, the South had a reputation as an unchurched
] wilderness populated by godless heathens. Knoxville, in
] particular. In 1810, when it was capital of Tennessee,
] Knoxville was described with horror (by a
] Pennsylvania-churched minister) as the only capital city
] in the world without a single chapel of any denomination.
] But later, in that respect, the South became more
] Northern than the North.
]
] A related native of the North was prohibition. The
] American temperance movement started in Massachusetts in
] the 1820s. The idea gained some advocates in Tennessee,
] but they weren't successful in a big way until after
] Illinois reformer Frances Willard conducted her more than
] one crusade in Knoxville. She sometimes made the South
] seem as if it was behind the times because unlike
] some progressive Northern communities, we didn't yet have
] prohibition.

A very interesting observation on the collective psychology of the South.

The Old North