Our article,"The Wrong Song of the South," has generated comment, mostly from League of the South types who cannot for a moment entertain the possibility that Southern culture is not synonymous with the confused political claims of the old Confederacy.

What interests me, however, is not their whipped-dog snivelling, but the legacy of ambiguity they claim for their own. Why is it, one wonders, the debate on Southerness always turns on the question of why the South left the Union? And more to the point, why is this question always so hard to answer?

The reason is that the South itself decided long ago that this question should not be answered, at least not definitively. I do not mean the decision was a conscious one. It was more like a cultural consensus, motivated by group defensiveness. Because if Southern identity could be maintained as an always moving target, it was less likely to take a mortal hit from its adversaries.

I have heard"the South" spoken of as a political entity, a religious cause, a cultural bulwark against the intrusions of industrialism, and so on. Try to attack one and"the South" immediately changes shape and turns into something else. Beito and I tried to show that one of these"Souths," the one that considered slavery central to its existence, did figure more largely than the others in the debates of the 1850's. And as it always has,"the South" shifted its ground, saying, in essence,"but that's not the South we mean."

It has been that way for a long time. Indeed, it is one of the most successful political shape-shifting stories we historians have ever seen. Southerners will never define who they are, and will never let you do so, either -- and so the debate will never permit itelf to end. And, for what it's worth, that is what the South means to me.