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The South And Twain 's View Of His Home Region

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Matthew Brock
Mr. Bashford
English III Pd 5
19 Mar. 2015
The South and Twain’s View of His Home Region The Southern United States has had quite an intriguing past. It is famously known for the struggle for African-American civil rights, which took place in the mid-1900s. However, there remains one past practice which seems to have overshadowed the rest: slavery. Slavery played a large part in how the South operated and was culturally perceived. Growing up in in the South, Mark Twain developed his opinions of the region upon what occurred there. He expressed his view of the history, society, and culture of the South in his many literary works. The Southern United States was broken up into several different sections. These sections included: the Deep South, the Upper South, and the Border States. The Deep South as a whole was known for its cotton production and new farming machines such as the cotton gin, developed by Eli Whitney. Because of this, in just a mere 40 years, the areas of cotton production multiplied nearly six times its original size. There was also quite a bit of rice and sugarcane farming, though this was heavily overshadowed by the cotton industry. (Appleby 401-403) The Upper South, however, was more concerned about the production of hemp, wheat, vegetables, and tobacco, so there was very little cotton production. The entire Southeast quadrant of the United States had perfect conditions for growing crops, with very little chance of freezes, which meant that

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