The American South is wide and varied, but there are a few factors that seem to define its history and its present. Some of these—a large English and Irish population, an agrarian economy, large rural swaths, high church attendance, lower incomes and cost of living, and political conservatism—don’t bear much resemblance to D.C. Others—a large African-American population, some native flora—do. According to Tamika Richeson, a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia specializing in the 19th century who has studied the history of D.C., the time the District most resembled the South was before the Civil War.
“At its conception, it was very Southern,” she says. “It was very rural, surrounded by two of the largest slave-holding states in the country. Its customs were very informed by Maryland and Virginia. It had a very Southern way about it.”
The most Southern thing about Washington was slavery. “Slavery was very much part of the landscape,” Richeson says. “D.C. was a place, prior to the Civil War, where slaves came from everywhere. I mean everywhere.” Marylanders and Virginians with a surplus of slaves could “hire out” to the District, a practice that was popular in Southern cities like Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans. “It was built on the backs of slaves,” Richeson says, “which, in that way, would make D.C. very Southern.”
