The South Region
The South is the largest of the four United States Census Bureau regions by population, and it covers sixteen states plus the District of Columbia. It is the only region the Bureau splits into three divisions rather than two: South Atlantic, East South Central and West South Central. The census South is not the Confederacy. Eleven states seceded in 1861; the census South contains sixteen, four of which never left the Union.
The sixteen Southern states
| State | Capital | Statehood | Census division |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delaware | Dover | 1787 | South Atlantic |
| Maryland | Annapolis | 1788 | South Atlantic |
| Virginia | Richmond | 1788 | South Atlantic |
| West Virginia | Charleston | 1863 | South Atlantic |
| North Carolina | Raleigh | 1789 | South Atlantic |
| South Carolina | Columbia | 1788 | South Atlantic |
| Georgia | Atlanta | 1788 | South Atlantic |
| Florida | Tallahassee | 1845 | South Atlantic |
| Kentucky | Frankfort | 1792 | East South Central |
| Tennessee | Nashville | 1796 | East South Central |
| Alabama | Montgomery | 1819 | East South Central |
| Mississippi | Jackson | 1817 | East South Central |
| Arkansas | Little Rock | 1836 | West South Central |
| Louisiana | Baton Rouge | 1812 | West South Central |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma City | 1907 | West South Central |
| Texas | Austin | 1845 | West South Central |
The District of Columbia sits in the South Atlantic division too, which is why federal tables sometimes show seventeen units.
Population, land and economic weight
The 2020 Census counted 126,266,107 people in the South, 38.1 percent of the country, more than the Northeast and Midwest combined. It is not the largest region by ground: its 868,417 square miles are 24.6 percent of United States land, well behind the West's 49.6 percent. Texas at 29,145,505 and Florida at 21,538,187 are the second and third most populous states in the country, and Georgia and North Carolina both cleared ten million.
The region carries 196 electoral votes, 199 with the District. It was also the clearest winner of the 2020 reapportionment: Texas gained two House seats, Florida and North Carolina one each, and only West Virginia lost one, for a net gain of three while the Midwest lost three and the Northeast two.
The physical geography
Two coastal plains, Atlantic and Gulf, wrap the region in a low arc of sand, clay and limestone. Inland of them the Piedmont rises to the southern Appalachians, where Mount Mitchell in North Carolina reaches 6,684 feet, the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi. The Fall Line between Piedmont and plain marks the head of navigation on every Atlantic river, which is why Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, Augusta and Montgomery all sit on it.
West of the mountains the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, the Delta, floors eastern Arkansas and Louisiana with river silt. The Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains lift Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, the Edwards Plateau and High Plains dry out western Texas, and Florida is a limestone shelf riddled with springs and sinkholes. Nearly all of it is humid subtropical, and it absorbs most of the country's hurricane landfalls on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
How the South was settled and remade
English settlement began at Jamestown in 1607, and the colonial economy organized itself around tobacco in the Chesapeake and rice and indigo in the Carolina Lowcountry. The cotton gin, patented in 1793, moved the center of gravity inland across the Black Belt and deepened slavery. Eleven states left the Union in 1861, and war, Reconstruction and sharecropping were followed by the Great Migration, which carried roughly six million Black Americans north and west between 1916 and 1970.
The flow reversed after 1970. Air conditioning, the interstate system and lower costs turned the Sun Belt into the country's fastest growing zone, and the South has gained population from every other region in every decade since.
What the South is known for
Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta is the busiest passenger airport in the world. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and the hub of American energy, and Texas produces more crude oil than any other state by a wide margin. Charlotte is a major banking center, the Research Triangle concentrates pharmaceutical and software research, and Nashville runs the country music industry. Cape Canaveral launches from Florida's Atlantic coast and Houston controls the flights. Kentucky distills most of the world's bourbon, Louisiana ships Midwestern grain out through the lower Mississippi, and Orlando draws more theme park visitors than anywhere else on earth.
Where the boundaries are argued
This region has the most contested edges in the census scheme. Maryland and Delaware are filed South, but both stayed in the Union, and the Mason-Dixon Line that people treat as the border runs along Maryland's northern edge rather than its southern one. West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 precisely to stay in the Union, and is still counted South. Oklahoma is census South though it was Indian Territory during the Civil War and the Bureau of Economic Analysis places it in a Southwest region alongside Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Texas is South by census, Southwest by the BEA, and its own category to the people in it. Running the other way, Missouri was a slave state admitted under the Missouri Compromise and is filed Midwest, while Kentucky never seceded and is filed South. And South Florida, whose population arrived largely from the Northeast, Cuba and Latin America, is the part of the region least like the rest of it.