IMHO, the south ends on the western side of Missouri and west of Dallas. That becomes the west. Kentucky and the Carolinas and the Virginias are for the most part southern. And it goes all the way to the east coast. Florida isn’t southern. I don’t think it ever has been. I figure the south begins where the accent begins and ends where people have never heard of “nanner puddin’”.
Some on the western 'side' of missouri still understand the meaning of general order eleven and jayhawker mayhem. We aren't the wild wild west or yankees or sincere southerners but we do have great bar-b-que...
Florida is the only State that refused to surrender to the Federales at the end of the Civil War. The Governor wrapped himself in the Stars and Bars and committed suicide on the front lawn of the Capital rather then surrender.
The Spanish or the English could never get any large scale settlement into Florida due to the susceptibility to disease in the swamps. While it is true that the ranchers who settled on dry land came down from Georgia, many of the citrus pioneers who came down prior to Governor Broward's decision to "re-route" Okeechobee and drain the everglades were from the north. It was really yankee citrus farmers and the original snowbirds who benefitted most from Flagler's railroad.
While it is true that much of the white proletariat that followed the railroad came from other southern states, they were always a minority on much of the east coast of Florida (and the Gulf from Sarasota south). Even a place like Tampa was more noteworthy for its Cuban, Italian, Jewish, Spanish, etc. population than its small population of "true southerners 100 years ago. In short, the only places in Florida that were truly culturally "southern" historically were the cattle counties in north and central Florida, and the panhandle. This is the source of the old joke that in Florida, you go north to go South, and south to go North.
You’ve got to be kidding me about Florida.....geez..parts of northern Florida and down deep into the interior are extremely southern..try DeFuniak Springs or Florala or Panama City or Palatka or Live Oak
i bet you did not know Florida before the Mouse and Cubans and Snowbirds came....back then the whole state was Dixie.