[x]

But, underlying all that is a basic disconnect between these two groups. It was this group of Northern, Republican, Industrial, elitists versus the Southern, Democrat, Agrarian, populists.

Populists? The planters who led Southern politics were anything but.

People love to portray history as a battle between rich, arrogant Easterners or Northerners and poor, downtrodden Southerners, as in the 1890s or the 1930s, but that wasn't always the case.

The antebellum South was a rich place and its leaders were often very rich men. Some of them ferociously snubbed the "rude mechanics" of the North (and their own backwoods).

Maybe it's not exactly the case now either. For all the snobbery and condescension you find in Northerners directed at the South, there's a distinct current of the same elitism going in the other direction.

[Ben Ficklin]

I don't mean to imply that all southerners were poor populists or poor common men nor do I mean to imply that all northerners were elitists or people of wealth.

Obviously there were planters or landed gentry in the lowlands but there were many more common men than wealthy men and those who were connected used populist techniques to play the poor whites off against the blacks.

Which leads you to another generalization: All southern politicians are masters of populist rhetoric.