Editing Southern United States (section)

===Origins===
The Southern [[planter class]] originated from the [[Early modern Britain|early modern]] English [[landed gentry]], who were aristocratic landowners but not [[Peerages in the United Kingdom|peers or "titled nobility"]]. According to historian [[G. E. Mingay]], the gentry were landowners whose wealth "made possible a certain kind of education, a standard of comfort, and a degree of leisure and a common interest in ways of spending it". Leisure distinguished gentry from businessmen who gained their wealth through work.<ref>{{cite book | last = Mingay | first = G. E. | author-link = G. E. Mingay | title = The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class | publisher =  Longman | series = Themes in British Social History | year = 1976 | place = New York | url = https://archive.org/details/gentryrisefallof0000ming | url-access=registration | isbn = 0582484030}}</ref> The gentry did not work; their income came largely from rents paid by [[tenant farmer]]s living on their estates.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://journal.c2er.org/history/1-3-virginia-settlement-piedmont-the-germans-scots-irish/|access-date=July 5, 2024|title=Governor William Berkeley: Virginia's First Economic Developer|website=Council for Community and Economic Research}}</ref> The concept of [[Southern chivalry]] in the [[Antebellum South]] originated from the gentry rank of [[Gentleman]], acting as a [[chivalry|chivalric ideal]] of the white planter class supposedly descended from the [[Knight|knights]] and [[Cavalier|Cavaliers]] of the Medieval and colonial eras.<ref name=Genovese>[[Genovese, Eugene D]]. "The Chivalric Tradition in the Old South." ''[[The Sewanee Review]]'', vol. 108, no. 2, 2000, pp. 188–205. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27548832. Accessed 12 May 2024.</ref><ref name=USHist>[https://www.ushistory.org/us/27c.asp "The Plantation & Chivalry"], ''[[USHistory.org]]''. Retrieved 12 May 2024.</ref>

Several Southern states (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) were among the British colonies that sent delegates to sign the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] and then fought against the government (Great Britain), along with the Middle and New England colonies, during the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/01/life-in-the-southern-colonies-part-2-of-3/|title=Life in the Southern Colonies (part 2 of 3)|first=David Lee|last=Russell|date=January 30, 2013|website=Journal of the American Revolution|access-date=November 19, 2019|archive-date=December 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191215221544/https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/01/life-in-the-southern-colonies-part-2-of-3/|url-status=live}}</ref> The basis for much of Southern culture derives from these states being among the original [[Thirteen Colonies]], and from much of the population of the colonial South having ancestral links to colonists who emigrated west. Southern manners and customs reflect the relationship with England that was held by the early population.

In 1765, London philanthropist Dr. [[John Fothergill (physician)|John Fothergill]] remarked on the cultural differences of the British American colonies southward from Maryland and those to the north, suggesting that the Southerners were marked by "idleness and extravagance". Fothergill suggested that Southerners were more similar to the people of the Caribbean than to the colonies to the north.<ref name=cob/> [[J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur]]'s 1782 ''[[Letters from an American Farmer]]'' described [[Charleston, South Carolina]], slaveholders as having "all that life affords most bewitching and pleasurable, without labour, without fatigue, hardly subjected to the trouble of wishing." He declared that although slavery had not yet been completely [[End of slavery in the United States|abolished in the Northern states]], the lot of northern slaves was far "different... in every respect." Crèvecœur sought to portray Southerners as stuck in the social, cultural and economic remnants of colonialism, in contrast to the Northerners whom he considered to be representative of the distinctive culture of the new nation.<ref name=cob/> 

Early in United States history, the contrasting characteristics of Southern states were acknowledged in a discussion between [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[François-Jean de Chastellux]]. Jefferson ascribed the Southerners' "unsteady", "generous", "candid" traits to their climate, while De Chastellux claimed that Southerners' "indelible character which every nation acquires at the moment of its origin" would "always be aristocratic" not only because of slavery but also "vanity and sloth". A visiting French dignitary concurred in 1810 that American customs seemed "entirely changed" over the [[Potomac River]], and that Southern society resembled those of the Caribbean.<ref name=cob>{{cite book |last1=James C. Cobb |title=Away Down South A History of Southern Identity |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780198025016 |pages=10–12}}</ref>