In the days after September 11, when Americans were watching a lot of television, many of us heard a Texas man-in-the-street tell a network interviewer something like, "Being a Texan or New Yorker just isn't very important right now. We're all Americans."

“For American sectionalism was forged by the design of God, the North made into a ‘region of frost, ribbed with ice and granite,’ the South basking in the ‘generous bosom’ of the sun.”