In Stephen Benet's epic poem, "John Brown's Body," a Connecticut boy ponders, in 1860, about the mysterious South. To him, it was a languorous land where grinning Topsies and obsequious Uncle Toms stood beneath each honeysuckle vine; where every white man was a gentleman, born to the manor, and every white woman a lady. Fields of cotton covered the land; banjo-strumming darkies made music in the evenings; Spanish moss festooned the great oak trees; the rivers were all named Suwanee; and the sun really shone all the time. The men sipped incessantly at mint juleps, and the girls were paragons of beauty. All of the houses were mansions with white pillars.
- William B. Hesseltine

The South is not the only area of the nation that developed specific sectional characteristics, but throughout the course of American history contemporary writers and historians have generally recognized it as the region most different from the rest of the country...
- Monroe Billington

The South is one of America's special regions--special in its history, its character, its ways of life, and the good life it has to offer. Newcomers may feel puzzled or perplexed by the differences they encounter, but that is not unusual (...) Some new arrivals even conclude that "the South is like a foreign country."
- Paul D. Escott