ABSTRACT
Thomas Jefferson once described the differences between North and South in the starkest of terms. The North, he said, was “cool, sober, laborious, independent … interested, chicaning” (McCardell 13). He gave all the rational, systematic, and, some might say, masculine and untrustworthy traits to Northerners. As for Southerners, they were “fiery, voluptuary, indolent, unsteady … generous, candid” (13). The South, he argued, was a stormy cauldron of passions. Jefferson was no stranger to reading the character of a people or of a place. He wrote voluminously about his experiences in various parts of the United States and Europe. His final reading of America was that it was a country divided, with the North guided by reason and the South driven by emotions.
