"Higher education was so much better most of the Southern ruling class sent their children to Northern colleges"
My third great grandfather was educated at a private, Masonic institute. He was instrumental in bringing public schooling to NC in 1839. He sent his sons to the University of North Carolina, the nation's first public university, founded in 1792. I'm the first college graduate in my family since before the Civil War, due to the privation brought on by the aftereffects of that conflict. So, don't preach to me about education. Especially since you are an unthinking ideologue, and wish to dictate your understanding of the history of my home, to me. You're rather dense, and quite offensive for having done so.
Everything about your post is true about the quality of education in the old South. But I think you'll find that the University of Georgia is the nation's oldest state university and that Charleston College was founded in 1771.
Nothing that you claim disputes what I said. It is unfortunate that you cannot accept FACTS without claiming it is "preaching".
Since you are impervious to information regarding these matters check the census of 1860 it supports what I have said 100%.
I am the least ideological person you can find and it isn't the "unthinking" which gets you in an uproar but the THINKING which undermines your carefully cherised mythology about the IGnoble Cause.