John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints

Regions Of The USA

Billy Dooley of Florida emailed me the following, which I think is well worth reproducing here:

My name is Billy and I'm from good ole Florida--a proud Southern State!

I am a proud Southerner just to let you know. I am partial to the South and I always will be, but I am trying to write this from a general and logical point of view. I am very historic in nature and the modern divisions of regions here in the USA stem from my historic patterns of thinking. Logically, culturally, politically, historically, common sensically, and a combination of all these leads me to the very strong conclusion that there should be only four regions to the continental USA--the North, Border, South, and West. It is these five criteria that are used to designate the regions these states belong to.

The states that compose the North are as follows:

  1. Maine
  2. New Hampshire
  3. Vermont
  4. New York
  5. Massachusetts
  6. Rhode Island
  7. Connecticut
  8. Pennsylvania
  9. New Jersey
  10. Ohio
  11. Michigan
  12. Indiana
  13. Illinois
  14. Wisconsin
  15. Minnesota
  16. Iowa
  17. Kansas
  18. Nebraska
  19. South Dakota
  20. North Dakota
The Northern (Yankee) states fit all five criteria for being Northern states. I'm not, however, by any means attempting to say the habits and ways of life are identical in all the twenty Northern states, but they do share attributes that are linked to a large degree. 1 - 9 are commonly known as the Northeastern states and 10 - 20 are commonly known as the Midwestern states.

The states that compose the Border are as follows:

  1. Delaware
  2. Maryland
  3. West Virginia
  4. Kentucky
  5. Missouri
  6. Oklahoma
These six states are constantly being debated about as to what region they should belong to. The South claims them when she has a political axe to grind. The North claims some of them almost all the time. The West probably even claims one of them. The states themselves are sometimes confused as to their place or region! But let me attempt to resolve the matter once and for all and maybe this will please everybody. The Mason-Dixon Line, as meaning has been added to it since its conception, was the division line between the Free and Slave states. The Line ran between the southernmost Free states (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska terr., and Kansas) and the northernmost Slave states (Oklahoma terr., Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware). So these six states were historically slave states, but were not Confederate states. They were culturally both Northern and Southern depending on the person and where in the states you were. They were politically tied to both the North and South (it was in these states that families were divided in their loyalties the most). They were south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but north of the Confederacy, so logically and common sensically they would be neither Northern nor Southern and yet would have both strong Northern and Southern sentiments and therefore more accurately and better designated as Border states.

The states that compose the South are as follows:

  1. South Carolina
  2. Mississippi
  3. Florida
  4. Alabama
  5. Georgia
  6. Louisiana
  7. Texas
  8. Virginia
  9. Arkansas
  10. North Carolina
  11. Tennessee
These states were the ones that composed the Confederate States of America (CSA), and are thus Southern. These eleven states share more in common and love for each other and stick together when trouble comes more than any other regions of the USA! 1 - 7 are commonly known as the Lower or Deep South and 8 - 11 are commonly known as the Upper South. The South is currently sometimes called the Southeast, but due to the automatic exclusion of a couple of Southern states and the inclusion of a few Border states, this throws off the historic regional geographical areas and thus I consider the term "Southeast" to be null and void.

The states that compose the West are as follows:

  1. Washington
  2. Idaho
  3. Montana
  4. Oregon
  5. Wyoming
  6. California
  7. Nevada
  8. Utah
  9. Colorado
  10. Arizona
  11. New Mexico
These eleven states, all pro-Union during the War even though most were just territories then. They share common history, culture, politics, and such and are therefore simply the Western states. Though the Confederacy penetrated to a clearly small degree the West, they never actually secured and acquired the West. Today, the West is mainly the product of post War Between the States Northerners and Southerners. 1 - 5 are commonly known as the Northwest and 6 - 11 are commonly known as the Southwest.

Thanks for your time and much obliged. Billy

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