ABSTRACT
As the label "American South" implies, it is impossible to define the South without attaching it to a particular place— the southeastern corner of the United States. In large part, the American South owes its creation to the seventeenth-century decision of Virginian tobacco planters to import African-American slaves. After the American Revolution, as Northern states gradually abandoned the use of unfree labor, the connection between slavery and geography became more pronounced. The nation divided into "free states" and "slave states," with the slave states being used in lieu of the term "Southern states". The American Civil War also undeniably defined the South. The war created heroes, a mythology, a history, a nationality, and a formal geographic entity. The idea of the American South has persisted, and the region has maintained itself as a culture area, geographic expression, and historical entity unto itself.
