And you would be wrong. Actually, a true Southern accent is closer to English Aristocracy than anything else. A linguistics expert explained it on one of those tv shows on the subject. I am not referring to Appalachian speak, nor the guttural speech of the lazy, but a proper Southern Accent is closer to proper English than any other American dialect.
Oh, and there was no "huge" influx of slaves, ever. It has been well documented that many Southerners rarely if ever saw a slave prior to the war. And they certainly did not interact with them such that their speech was impacted by them.
What you state contradicts itself. Those who where in close proximity of the slaves would have been the more aristocratic Southerner, while the ones who were not would have been those speaking Appalachian as you say. At the time of the Revolution half if not slightly more of the population of South Carolina was African. Accents and speech patterns are acquired from ones peers, not parents. On the plantation is was quite common for white and black kids being playmates, thus the accents and speech patterns would be influenced. Works the other way to. Listen to Charlie Rangel speak. He does not have a typical African American accent, but a typical Irish NYC accent. I would suspect he had a lot of Irish and German friends as a kid growing up.
“Oh, and there was no “huge” influx of slaves, ever.”
There were about 3,200,000 slaves just prior to the civil war, and the confederacy had a population of around 10 million.
The slave trade had stopped several decades before, but there were a lot of blacks around.
I read something very similar to what you described. And I think I remember them saying that the true Southern accent is closer to English aristocracy than the English used today in England by the commoners. I think I read it on a web-site reading about the origin of widely used languages and dialects.
Thanks for that thoughtful reply... Although I have an Appalachian accent, it is still similar. Not one bit ashamed of it either even though I’ve been laughed at. Anyway, the southern accentS (There’s more than one) were developed over a long period of time and from more than one source. The large numbers of Scots-Irish had something to do with it as did the English. You should examine the story of Tangier Island in my home state of Virginia for an surreal experience. They sound nothing like modern Americans.