The term "back country" as it applies to British America, would refer to the interior portions of the colonies, from Pennsylvainia down to the Carolinas. Of the four waves of English emmigration to British America, those who settled in the back country came last, and tended to be from the north border country of Britian, Scotland, and northern Ireland. They gravitated toward and in many cases were encouraged to settle the back country or frontier portions of the colonies.
I believe you'll find that Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Patrick Henry, Mr Lee, and George Mason were Southerners and all were important contributors to the founding concepts.
I think it would be more accurate to say they were all Virginians, and with the possible exception of Patrick Henry were products of the aristocratic tidewater culture.
I also acknowledge the contributions of (especially) Benjamin Franklin, as well as the Adams', Hancock, and others.
And many others, as we both well know.
Why do Northerners feel it is necessary to denigrate the South? Or is it that you can't accept that Southerners were simply tired of getting screwed by the very government they had helped found?
From your response I take you weren't thinking about the tidewater aristocracy when you used the term, but that is the cultural background of virtually all of the southern founders. When you claim that a particular culture by and large wrote the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, you'd better be prepared to explain (and defend) what culture you're talking about.
Most southerners on these threads tend to disavow a connection to the southern tidewater aristocracy, preferring to embrace the back country (or upcountry) yeomen as their prototype ancestor. Which is fine except that this group was not the culture that our southern founding fathers sprang from. This group was not much interested in participating in the noble experiment of democracy, and they were not represented well amongst the men who came together in New York and Philidelphia to create this great nation.
Today, the federal government with its billions in income tax revenues is the center of power and most feared source of oppression in the US. In the days before federal income taxes, things looked different to some Americans. Those in the back country, habitually outvoted by clever lowlanders often saw less to fear in distant Washington than in state political elites. Whatever the sentiment against federal revenue agents, state government and its decisions affected the lives of highlanders more and produced greater friction and animosity.
At the other end of the social scale, many wealthy citizens, including more than a few big Delta planters, feared the levelling Jacksonian passions of local Democrats and trusted the federal government and the Whigs to keep the ship of state on an even keel. And of course, African Americans in the South on the whole had more to fear from local than federal authorities (in some Northern states, though, things looked different, as US Marshalls hunted runaways and state governments passed "personal liberty laws" to prevent extradition).
One way confusion sets in is the Celtic-Cavalier thesis. On the whole, it's probably true that those in the hill country were more Irish or Scots-Irish or North English than those in the flatlands. But it wasn't the case that everyone whose ancestry was "Celtic" was poor and every "Cavalier" rich. Rich lowland families like the Butlers or Bullochs might be related to the Irish or Scots nobility. A poor, but enterprising Irishman might find his fortune in Georgia or the Mississippi Delta. A great Tidewater family like the Washingtons, Randolphs or Byrds would apparently have poor cousins in the West Virginia highlands. In the Piedmont, where Madison and Jefferson lived, and in the lands beyond the Appalachians Celt, Cavalier, and even Yankee might intermarry. And the largest settlement of Scots was in the lowlands in the Cape Fear area. There definitely were deep divisions in the White South, but the Celtic-Cavalier theory can blur as much as it clarifies.
Many of those whose ancestors would have been very critical or hostile of the Confederacy in the 1860s, now assume it spoke for them and fought their fight. It's an indication of how historical understandings change and symbols take on different meanings, but it shouldn't be allowed to govern our understanding of the past. Present-day political divisions get projected back on the past. People want to believe that all the libertarians were on one side and all the statists on the other. In fact, things were much messier, and confused by regional interests and the issue of slavery. Many who think about the Civil War today tend to get their wires crossed, taking the near anarchic freedom-loving spirit of the back country or Britain's Celtic fringes for the inspiration behind the Old South or the Confederacy, when in fact the positive state-building impulses of the lowlanders played a crucial role in the history of the 19th century South.
The United States grew out of the interaction of a variety of different groups. It's certainly possible to wish that history had unfolded differently, but it's doubtful that one group alone -- whether libertarian backcountry pioneers, public-spirited Virginians, learned Yankees, pragmatic New Yorkers, or temperate Philadelphians -- could have done a better job by themselves without the moderating or inspiring influence of the others. Left to themselves, the various groups that made the country would probably have done a worse job than the nation to which they all contributed did.
As for the tidewater aristocracy, my folks still live on a small fraction of the original land grant, in 1641. I not only do not disavow their presence, I am a descendant. But despite the impoverishment my family suffered as a direct result of the War Between the States, (7/8 of the family land gone, worth (probably) over 1 billion today), the greatest loss was not to us in the sense of having lost tangible wealth, but the Constitutional Republic which the Founders tried to establish. My ancestors took an oath to the Soverign State of Maryland after the Revolution, which gives a perspective on the Soverign status of the individual Former Colonies, and defines the word 'State' as commonly used in the time: to wit, a country. This is why states (even today) have Secretaries of State.
The folks in the 'back country' wanted one thing: to be left alone to succeed or fail on their own merits. It was not until English Army atrocities reached an impermissable level that an army assembled from the hinterlands to defeat a wing of Cornwwallis' Army (I believe it was at Kings' Mountain, but I may be wrong) and then go home.
That defeat for the British, by backwoodsmen fighting for the safety of their families, was one of the events which led to Washington being able to bottle up Cornwallis' army near Yorktown (along with the French Naval intervention), and led to the conclusion of the war.
In either aspect, the tenacious and ferocious fighting for the safety of home and family, as well as the classical education which the 'aristocracy' posessed, we find the culture which gave rise to the Republic. That those of the 'aristocracy' sought to protect the Rights of those in the hinterlands as well as their own interests is another hallmark of the suitability of those men for the enormous task they had at hand. The Southern aversion to the term "Aristocracy" has its roots in the abolition of that status by the selfsame persons who held it, as well as historical abuse by the "Aristocracy" of England and France of their positions of power. Men here were not to be serfs, but citizens.
I understand there are complications in this viewpoint when one factors in slaves, indentured servants, and the indigenous residents, but recall the times and do not judge them by today's standards. A citizen was free, white, 21, and a property owner. Not all were wealthy in terms of liquid assets, and many who owned slaves worked alongside them in the fields. Most did not mistreat so valuable an asset, and in many cases, families were connected until and beyond manumission, whether voluntarily done or by government decree.