Chapter 11, The South, Chapter 12, History Summary and Analysis

Mencken hates the American South; it is that simple. He thinks it is crude, uncultured, full of idiots and thinks that if the late Confederacy disappeared, the world would probably be better for it. Baptist and Methodist "barbarism" rules it now. But at one time, it had the greatest civilization of the Western Hemisphere. They actually had an aristocracy, a leisure class.

The Civil War destroyed it all. Virginia is the greatest loss, today without art, literature, philosophy, mind or her own aspiration. The best blood of the south has been drawn out and the worst blood of all of Western Europe remains. The line between the high-class and low-class South was clearly drawn before, without intermarriage. Free inquiry is destroyed by idiotic certainty.

The Confederate people are cowards and fools as bred...