But there's an even longer political history of Southerners whining and wheedling their way into disproportionate and undeserved power. For all its resistance to Big Government, the South is arguably the most socialistic region in the country; nearly half of all U.S. military personnel are stationed there, and the region was only lightly affected by the post-Cold War base closings of the 1980s and 1990s. This is the legacy of the Southern congressional barons on Capitol Hill, who blocked civil rights legislation from Reconstruction until 1957. Before that, Southerners successfully turned defeat in the Civil War into an occasion to erect Jim Crow laws. Before that, the South treasonously separated itself from the Union. Before that, the South successfully battled all attempts to end the practice of slavery, which the Founding Fathers well understood was incompatible with the principles of the American Revolution.