William G. Thomas III, The Border South

Anyone who has lived for a time in Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, or Maryland has heard their place of residence categorized as "not really the South." Sometimes, folks from the deeper South dismiss these places as not representative of the region; at other times Northerners make the comment, often with a sigh of relief that the person would be spared the full treatment of Southerness and might, therefore, enjoy a chance at civilization and reasonableness. The observation is at best ill-informed but it is persistently rendered, and we should admit that there is reason for it.

The Border region of the South has an anomalous history, at once deeply embedded in all things Southern and at the same time connected through experience and networks into other regions. The Border South was conceived as a region and a concept before the Civil War, rising to national attention in the geopolitics of the sectional crisis. In the eighteenth century the South's borders were not a subject of either concern or observation, and identities were shaped more around states than regions. But in the nineteenth century, as the nation grew and expanded westward and as slavery began to mark the Southern states off from the rest of the Union, the idea of a border began to take shape.

Historians, writers, and observers have tried to define the Border South and its relationship to the rest of the South. Historian William Freehling, for example, considers the border the "quasi South," "a world between," and sees Richmond as "less southern" than Charleston. The true South, it seems, can only be found in the plantation black belt in the Lower South where slavery dominated, secession sentiment boiled, and the humid, jungle-like climate welcomed the "slave drain" from Virginia in the 1850s. The idea that the Border South was not Southern, as tempting as it might be, conveniently sets aside much of what we know about the region in order to give clarity to the sectional split not does it adequately represent the complexity of life on the border. The idea of a border depends in large measure on a "closed" South, one sealed by a definitive geography or polity. Along the border we quickly discover that the South was not closed but permeable, not sealed airtight but punctured with openings.

The region included Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, in the east and stretched west along the Ohio River, gathering in Kentucky, and then after the 1820 Compromise, Missouri, and wrapped south and west to include Arkansas. By the 1850s as sectional identities took shape these states increasingly were understood and understood themselves as on the border. They contained various sub regions and economies, but all allowed and, indeed, promoted slavery. Virginia, for example, in 1860 stood at the top of the list in the South in its commitment to slavery. It was the largest slaveholding state in the country with the most slaveholders and the most blacks living within it. Along the border, though, Virginia was not alone in its staggering investment in slavery on the eve of the war. Kentucky held more enslaved people (225,483) than Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, and the state contained more slaveholders than any other Southern state except Georgia and Virginia. The single largest slaveholding county in Kentucky, it turns out, stood right on the border on the Ohio River: Jefferson County with over 10,000 enslaved persons.

The Border, however, was also home to the largest numbers of free black Americans in the South. Over 55,000 blacks in Virginia were free in 1860, over 80,000 in Maryland, including over 25,000 in the city of Baltimore. Most free blacks in the South lived in small towns and urban centers. Some accumulated property, a few amassed small fortunes. For these men and women daily movements and exchanges were carefully considered, a mistake could cost them their freedom.