how though? I mean I have a hard time seeing Nashville being a slave hotspot.
Well, it was. The City of Nashville even purchased 24 slaves for $12,000 in 1846.
To answer OP, slaveholding Whites in the South were planter aristocracy. They were social elites who ruled the region's cultural and civic institutions: universities, military colleges, theatres, etc. Their agrarian culture was imitative of the slow, genteel pace of English estate life, which of course put them at odds with increasingly industrious and Germanic Yankees. Describing this dynamic as "conservative" or "liberal" in a contemporary culture war sense is really missing the point.
I guess a better question is - I feel their descendants would be more likely to be lefty now rather than the poor white masses. My guess is many of them married into yankee families and left the south or the few southern white liberals out there (that aren't carpetbaggers) are descended from them
Why do you think that?
because they would have been probably be more likely to be exposed to liberal institutions (OSS, CFR, Central Banking etc). Think someone like Lewis Powell, who probably was descended from slaveowners.
What about “Central Banking” is “liberal”? Just curious.
