Second, I have no beef with the South today, or southern people as a whole. Never have. I was just in Tennessee and Mississippi in May, and had a great time. Excellent food, nice folks for the most part (though I did, certainly, encounter the "Lost Cause" types, too). In fact, I have to go there to find decent food - you can't get decent Chicken Fried Steak or Grits north of the Mason-Dixon, or West of the Mississippi (well, maybe Texas, but...).
Third, I never qualified all southerners as "toothless, illiterate, troglodytes who obsess over keeping the colored down".
Fourth, Southerners are not totally offensive to my refined (that comes with a guffaw...there's very little about me that's "refined") sense of aesthetics and culture.
Fifth, you'll notice my argument was with the "Lost Cause" adherents, those Southerners who look back, all weepy-eyed, at the "Moonlight & Magnolia" days of the South, and think they would be better off if those days returned. The one's who think the South was "right" and should have won the war. The system they "yearn" to return to, was one built upon enslavement of human beings. They think it was right to fight for that, or worse, to fight for "states rights" in disregard of the issue. Those people I have a problem with.
But I'm not one to mistake all Southerners as part of the "Lost Cause" crowd. But the "Lost Cause" mentality is pervasive among a certain subset of the population, and that's what I was talking about.
It's the South that held onto the war. I believe that's why in Civil War circles, 90% of the talk is about the Southern generals, the battles that resulted in Southern victories, and the "if only" scenarios.
As a Civil War addict, I get tired of the attention and focus placed on the South, and when I encounter "Lost Cause" adherents that seek to demean the Union side, I take them on, and I stand up for the side that won.