Yet let no one deceive himself as to what may be learned, even by wide acquaintance or long residence. It is not so long ago that a Southern lady who had lived for ten years in the neighborhood of Boston was amazed to be told that such Massachusetts officers as Robert G. Shaw, during the Civil War, actually came from good families; she had always understood that people of position would not take commissions in the hireling Federal army. If such errors can be made as to the North, like misconceptions may arise as to the South. All that has ever been written about the Southern question must be read in the light of the environment, the habits of thought, and the daily life of the Southern people, white and black. CHAPTER II THE SOUTHLAND In what do the Southern States differ as to extent and climate from other parts of the United States? First of all, what does the Southland include? Previous to the Civil War, when people said "the South" they usually meant the fifteen states in which slavery was established. Since 1865 some inroads and additions to that group have been made. Maryland is rather a middle state than a Southern; West Virginia has been cut off from the South, and is now essentially Western, as is Missouri; but the new State of Oklahoma is a community imbued with a distinct Southern spirit. For many reasons the Northern tier of former slave-holding states differ from their Southern neighbors; and in this book less attention will be given to Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee than to their South-lying neighbors, because they are becoming to a considerable degree mineral and manufacturing communities, in which the negro problem is of diminishing significance. The true Southland, the region in which conditions are most disturbed and an adjustment of races is most necessary, where cotton is most significant, is the belt of seven states from South Carolina to Texas, to which the term "Lower South" has often been applied.