AHC: Change the American South's Reputation

When compared to the rest of the United States, the South is usually seen as socially conservative, religious/fundamentalist, racially divided, poor/agrarian, and overall "backwards." As I understand, many of these features have been around for centuries - by the time of Independence, it was the most agarian part of the Colonies and the heartland of slavery, and Evangelical Protestantism has been extant since the Second Great Awakening (though, IIRC, the intersection of fundamental Christianity and politics wasn't mainstream until the 60s/70s, and many other regions, such as New England, have been equally associated with religiosity and social conservatism until the last century or so).

However, with a POD after 1789, how many Southern cultural/political stereotypes can you change or reverse?
 
Can the following be changed with a post-1789 POD? Here's my take:

- Socially Conservative: Ehh, maybe (see below*)
- Religious/Fundamentalist: Yes (Second Great Awakening ≠ inevitable)
- Racially Divided**: Maybe, but you need a LOT of changes in the 1810-1840 era
- Poor/Agrarian***: Yes, but only just so.
- "Backwards": Tell that to the monied class of the Antebellum era. Much of this perception is from the 1850-1960 South. So...yes?

* Get a bigger middle-class to crop up (say, west of the Appalachians or in one of the "big" coastal cities) and more investment in the local economy and this might well change (see: New Orleans pre-Civil War).
**A pre-Independence POD gives you more wiggle room in terms of undoing OTL's racial caste system. By 1776 you're going to get at least shades of OTL tensions.
***"Poor" wasn't really accurate in the Antebellum era given cash crop abundance, more like "unequal in wealth distribution" (see: Latin America). Agrarianism was pretty entrenched by your POD, but either total political domination by non-Southerners early on, OR a more destructive Civil War, presents an opening to "clear the slate" economically speaking.
 
Antagonise the North enough to see through a lasting radical reconstruction with land distributed to poor whites and poor blacks alike. Politics in the south becomes divided between a multiracial alliance defending this accomplishment and a wealthier elite trying to reverse it. Due to demographics being weighted in favour of the former, they win out, and politicians from this alliance start also advocating for higher public services, infrastructure investment and more progressive taxation. This, in turn, encourages more immigrants to the US to head towards southern cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and New Orleans. This pushes them towards more urbanisation, providing the workforce for industrialisation and seeing the accompanying decline in religious faith that comes in cities.

Come the mid-20th century, the north looks at the south as a left-wing, libertine place where the rich get hammered on taxes and white women mix with black men.
 
Andrew Johnson a few years before the Civil War develops a secret interest in alchemy. This work with Mercury begins to cause a deterioration of the mind that nobody notices up the point where he's chosen for the Vice Presidency. Following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Johnson, the structure of his brain finally collapsing into a mad sludge, decides it to be the opportune time to walk into the Oval Office and shoot President Lincoln. A country incensed with the Democrats (well, a northern half of a country, if the South wanted a say in things then they shouldn't have betrayed the Union) swears in Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, a Republican with a long history against slavery, as the President. Colfax, in addition to Lincoln's platform of continuing the war to its end, providing assistance to disabled veterns and completing the Trans-Continental Railroad, embarks on a program of economic enfranchisement of former slaves in the South, done by buying up and dividing plantation land that collapses in price due to the lack of viability of plantation farming without slavery. The communities that grow around these new small farms, through ever-increasing economic power, the election of black politicians without the harassment of the KKK and similar movements, and the ability to organize into militias, are able to stave off Jim Crow even after the Army finally withdraws.
 
When compared to the rest of the United States, the South is usually seen as socially conservative, religious/fundamentalist, racially divided, poor/agrarian, and overall "backwards." As I understand, many of these features have been around for centuries - by the time of Independence, it was the most agarian part of the Colonies and the heartland of slavery, and Evangelical Protestantism has been extant since the Second Great Awakening (though, IIRC, the intersection of fundamental Christianity and politics wasn't mainstream until the 60s/70s, and many other regions, such as New England, have been equally associated with religiosity and social conservatism until the last century or so).

However, with a POD after 1789, how many Southern cultural/political stereotypes can you change or reverse?

Religious fundamentalism is a product of the Second Great Awakening which displaced the Anglican church in much of the South, but unlike other once highly religious parts of the United States (i.e. New England), the influence of Protestant Christianity has never gone down since. A racial division is pretty much inevitable when you let slavery exist and allow slave owners to "breed" their slaves. Poverty and agrarianism is a product of slavery as well, where plantation owners (what every white man aspires to be) can monopolise all the wealth and the lands their system can't thrive on end up in the hands of poor yeoman farmers. This causes backwardness as a result, although it should be noted that at the time of the American Revolution, the South had about 2/3 of the economic value of the 13 Colonies.

In large part, many of the worst parts of the South were built into it thanks to the existence of slavery which even marginal areas of the South like Appalachia were economically linked to. And slavery economically makes sense in the South thanks to the climate and geography.
 
One possibility is that the British do well enough in the American War of independence to keep Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. They also get what would become Alabama and Mississippi, and pick of Louisiana out of the Napoleonic Wars. The USA is still formed, but remains limited to what is now the Northeast, the Midwest,and the Upper South.

The UK abolishes slavery as OTL and forces their colonies to go along. The USA later abolishes slavery peacefully, because Virginia/ Maryland/ North Carolina without the other southern states can't prevent it. With slavery abolished peacefully which is how it happened in most of the rest of the world, this part of the world is simply not as backwards.
 
One possibility is that the British do well enough in the American War of independence to keep Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. They also get what would become Alabama and Mississippi, and pick of Louisiana out of the Napoleonic Wars. The USA is still formed, but remains limited to what is now the Northeast, the Midwest,and the Upper South.

The UK abolishes slavery as OTL and forces their colonies to go along. The USA later abolishes slavery peacefully, because Virginia/ Maryland/ North Carolina without the other southern states can't prevent it. With slavery abolished peacefully which is how it happened in most of the rest of the world, this part of the world is simply not as backwards.

If the British have the Deep South and the conquered frontier land to expand slavery into, then there's going to be much strong pro-slavery arguments in Britain.
 
Due to a horrible series of mishaps the US ends up at war with Britain and Mexico in the 1840s. New England and New York are devastated by a British invasion and occupation. (Or if you want to be less flamboyant, embargo and economic collapse, perhaps?) A not insignificant number of wealthy refugees settle in the south rather than return home, and industry grows. Slavery is abolished at a state level throughout the 1880s-1910s by labor affiliated politicians, for being unfair competition to white workers. In the popular mind today, it's not really distinguished from the more widespread colonial slavery, old news that the whole country is implicated in. The economic and cultural elite live in places like Richmond and Muscle Shoals, and are much loathed by their northern neighbors, who they imagine to be impoverished, reactionary, and hyper-religious. Abroad, Americans assure foreigners they're not from THAT part of the country.
 
Earlier invention of the air conditioning unit leading to more immigration into the South earlier and more businesses moving to the South. Maybe then we’d see some stronger Southern labor movements.
 
Have the Boll weevil crop up halfway through the Civil War. Deperate aristocrats fight harder with less, and thus the south is subjected to a far more radical reconstruction.
 
Have the Boll weevil crop up halfway through the Civil War. Deperate aristocrats fight harder with less, and thus the south is subjected to a far more radical reconstruction.

Alternatively what if the Bill Weevil came up in the 1850s and made slavery useless for cotton prior to a civil war?
 
AIDS breaks out a few centuries earlier. No surplus population in africa to be traded away, with less surplus labor in eurasia.

Hence no slaves or indentured servants -- the colonial elites, such as they are would have to put up with free farmers and nobody they can boss around easily.
 
Politics in the south becomes divided between a multiracial alliance defending this accomplishment and a wealthier elite trying to reverse it.
Why would this happen when OTL shows the exact opposite would occur, poor whites would unite with their elites to keep down black people. Land distribution alone isn't powerful enough to overcome deeply embedded racial resentment.
 
Have Robert E Lee make a speech in 1870 about the importance of education as a tool for the greater success of any individual faced with hardship or pain.
 
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