The Confederate Diaspora

This paper investigates how white migration out of the postbellum South diffused Confederate culture and entrenched racial norms across the United States during a critical juncture of westward expansion and post-Civil War reconciliation. The central question is whether the “Confederate diaspora” — Southern white migrants who left the former Confederacy from 1870 to 1900 — causally shaped the geography of Confederate memorialization, white supremacist organizations, racial violence, and long-run racial inequity outside the South.

Using complete-count U.S. Census records from 1870–1900 and linked Census records from the Census Linking Project, the authors track nearly one million white migrants from former Confederate states, including more than 61,000 former enslavers and 127,000 of their household kin, who settled outside the South by 1900. By 1900, migrants from the former Confederacy comprised on average 2.2% of the population in destination counties. Four outcomes measuring Confederate culture at the county level are constructed: Confederate memorialization (monuments, place names, schools), United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) chapters, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapters, and lynchings of Black people.

The primary identification strategy is a shift-share instrumental variable (SSIV) that combines the cross-sectional distribution of Southern white migrants across non-Southern counties in 1870 (shares) with predicted migration flows out of each Southern state between 1870 and 1900 (shifts). The predicted shifts are constructed from origin-county economic and ideological push factors estimated via LASSO, insulating the IV from endogenous location sorting. Conditional on the 1870 Southern white population share, the SSIV identifies the distinct causal influence of the postbellum Confederate diaspora.

Main findings are large relative to the diaspora’s modest population share. Moving from zero to the mean Confederate diaspora share implies an 8 percentage point (p.p.) increase in the likelihood of KKK activity relative to a mean prevalence of 35% in non-Southern counties. Effects on post-1900 lynching events are even larger proportionally: a 4 p.p. increase in likelihood relative to a mean of only 5%. IV estimates for Confederate memorialization show that a 1 p.p. increase in the Southern white share in 1900 raised the likelihood of memorialization by 3.4 p.p. (after controlling for the 1870 share), relative to a baseline prevalence of 25% outside the South. Effects on UDC chapters are similarly large given the organization’s limited non-Southern footprint (present in only 10% of counties). IV estimates consistently exceed OLS estimates, consistent with economic sorting biasing OLS downward.

Beyond Confederate symbolism, the diaspora also contributed to a novel form of racial exclusion: the “sundown town.” A 1 p.p. increase in the Confederate diaspora share in 1900 led to a 2.4 p.p. increase in the likelihood of Black depopulation (defined as towns with at least 25 Black residents in 1870 having zero Black residents after 1900).

Former slaveholders, though only about 6% of Confederate migrants, played an outsized role. They disproportionately sorted into frontier counties and into positions of public authority — more than twice as likely to work as lawyers or judges and nearly three times as likely to work in public administration as the average non-slaveholding Southern white migrant. Their cultural influence was especially pronounced in frontier communities where institutions were weak and norms malleable. In Denver, first-generation Southern white migrants were 11% more likely to join the KKK than men with no Southern heritage, with a similar differential observed for second-generation migrants.

The diaspora’s effects persist into the 21st century: counties with larger Confederate diasporas in 1900 exhibit larger racial wage gaps, greater residential segregation, higher rates of Black incarceration, higher rates of police-induced Black mortality, and more conservative racial attitudes among whites, as measured in modern survey data. These long-run findings are identified using the same county-level SSIV strategy. Scope conditions: effects are larger in frontier counties (weaker institutions, more malleable norms), in counties with fewer Union Army enlistees, and in newly incorporated areas with fewer than 2 residents per square mile in 1860.

Q: What is the central research question and why does it matter? A: The paper asks whether postbellum Southern white migration causally diffused Confederate culture — memorialization, organized white supremacy, and racial violence — beyond the South, and whether this early cultural transplantation has persistent effects on racial inequity today. It matters because Confederate monuments and persistent Black disadvantage in labor, housing, and policing are often attributed to the legacies of slavery within the South; this paper shows the mechanism by which those norms spread nationally through internal migration at a critical juncture of westward expansion and post-war reconciliation.

Q: How large was the Confederate diaspora, and who comprised it? A: Estimates from linked Census records suggest that nearly one million whites left the former Confederacy for the rest of the U.S. in the three decades after the war, including more than 61,000 former enslavers and 127,000 of their household kin. By 1900, migrants from the former Confederacy averaged 2.2% of the population in non-Southern destination counties. The diaspora hailed primarily from the upper South — Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina — and later from Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

Q: How do the authors construct the shift-share instrumental variable, and what identifying assumption does it require? A: The SSIV multiplies each Southern origin state’s 1870 settlement shares across non-Southern counties (the shares) by predicted total Southern white outflows from 1870 to 1900 (the shifts), where the predicted shifts are constructed by summing LASSO-selected origin-county push factors — economic conditions, cotton and tobacco potential, Civil War battle locations, Black population share — rather than actual flows. The exclusion restriction requires that these predicted push-factor-driven outflows affect destination county outcomes only through the Confederate diaspora they deliver, not through direct economic linkages with origin counties. Conditioning on the 1870 Southern white share absorbs time-invariant destination heterogeneity correlated with antebellum settlement.

Q: What are the IV estimates for Confederate memorialization and UDC chapters? A: A 1 p.p. increase in the Southern white share in 1900 raised the likelihood of Confederate memorialization by 3.4 p.p. after controlling for the 1870 share (relative to a baseline prevalence of 25% outside the South). For UDC chapters, which were present in only 10% of non-Southern counties, IV estimates show similar or larger proportional effect sizes. IV estimates are consistently more than twice the size of OLS estimates, consistent with downward bias from economic sorting of Southern whites toward productive, culturally-diverse destinations.

Q: What are the IV estimates for KKK activity and Black lynchings, and how are they interpreted? A: A 1 p.p. increase in the Southern white share in 1900 raised the likelihood of KKK chapter presence by 3.5 p.p. (controlling for 1870 shares), relative to a mean KKK prevalence of 37% in non-Southern counties, implying that moving from zero to the mean diaspora share is associated with an 8 p.p. increase in the probability of KKK activity. For Black lynchings, the corresponding IV estimate is 1.5 p.p. (column 5), with the effect rising when earlier migration is controlled, against a mean prevalence of only 5% — implying moving from zero to the mean raises lynching likelihood by 4 p.p. Critically, the authors find no diaspora effect on white lynchings, which distinguishes racially-targeted violence from a generalized Southern culture of violence.

Q: What is a “sundown town” and what does the paper find about the diaspora’s role in producing them? A: Sundown towns, described in historical research by Loewen (2005), are all-white towns where Black residents and other minorities were excluded from residing after sunset, spreading throughout the non-South from 1890 to 1960 and representing a novel form of racial exclusion distinct from de jure Jim Crow institutions. The authors find that a 1 p.p. increase in the size of the Confederate diaspora in 1900 led to a 2.4 p.p. increase in the likelihood of Black depopulation — defined as towns with at least 25 Black residents in 1870 having zero Black residents after 1900 — changing the geography of Black settlement throughout the 20th century.

Q: What role did former slaveholders specifically play, and how are their effects separately identified? A: Former slaveholders comprised just over 6% of the Confederate migrant sample but played an outsized role: they were about 50% more likely than the average Southern white migrant to work in any public-facing authority occupation, more than twice as likely to work as lawyers or judges, and nearly three times as likely to work in public administration. Their effects are identified using an analogous SSIV that, conditional on the instrumented overall diaspora, draws on distinct identifying variation in slaveholder-specific push factors. Former slaveholders gravitated toward Western, lower-density, cotton-suitable counties with higher Breckinridge vote shares and fewer Union Army soldiers, consistent with seeking to reconstruct antebellum hierarchies in malleable frontier spaces.

Q: Why were effects stronger in frontier counties? A: The paper finds that diaspora impacts on Confederate culture diffusion were significantly larger in counties along the frontier, where state institutions were weak and cultural norms not yet deeply ingrained. Restricting the sample to counties with fewer than 2 residents per square mile in the 1860 Census yields somewhat larger estimates than baseline, and the differential sorting of Southern whites (especially former slaveholders) into these nascent communities suggests that institutional malleability amplified the cultural entrepreneurs’ influence. Fewer Union Army enlistees in destination counties also amplified effects, as those families might otherwise have opposed resurgent Confederate ideology.

Q: How did the diaspora transmit its norms to subsequent generations and non-Southern neighbors? A: In the Denver metropolitan area, using newly digitized KKK membership records, first-generation Southern migrants were 11% more likely to join the KKK than men with no Southern heritage, and a similar differential holds for second-generation migrants (born in the diaspora), with patterns holding within Census enumeration blocks. White men without Southern heritage living next door to first- or second-generation Southern whites were significantly more likely to join the KKK, consistent with horizontal cultural spillovers. For naming patterns, non-Southern white parents who moved to counties with a larger Confederate diaspora gave their later-born children names more evocative of Confederate heroes than those given to earlier-born children — providing direct evidence of cultural spillovers beyond the diaspora.

Q: What long-run effects of the diaspora are documented through the 21st century? A: Using the county-level SSIV strategy, the paper finds that a larger Confederate diaspora in 1900 is associated with larger racial wage gaps, greater residential segregation, higher rates of Black incarceration, and higher rates of police-induced Black mortality through the 21st century. These disparities are mirrored in more conservative racial attitudes among whites in these counties as measured in modern survey data. These persistent effects suggest that, despite racially progressive national policy reform since the 1960s, locally institutionalized mechanisms reinforced by a culture of racial animus continue to generate inequity.

Q: How robust are the main estimates to alternative specifications? A: The authors show robustness across: (i) alternative spatial standard errors using Conley (1999) distance-based clustering and Adao et al. (2019) shift-share inference corrections; (ii) Belloni et al. (2014) double LASSO control selection; (iii) replacing predicted shifts with actual shifts; (iv) a random-shifts placebo where fewer than 5% of coefficients are significant; (v) dropping individual origin or destination states one-by-one (all estimates remain significant with 97% positive Rotemberg weights); (vi) excluding border states with antebellum slavery (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia), which actually increases estimates; and (vii) restricting to newly incorporated counties with near-zero 1860 populations, which yields somewhat larger effects.

Q: What is the paper’s contribution to the culture-institutions literature? A: The paper uses granular data on migration, occupational choices, and local governance to shed light on the historical process by which Confederate “cultural entrepreneurs” captured early institutions across America, illustrating how culture and institutions reinforce each other during critical junctures of nation-building. The findings suggest that laws to reduce racial discrimination may have limited impact where a culture of racial animus is ingrained in local institutions — an institutionalized persistence mechanism that helps explain the gap between formal legal reforms and observed racial outcomes. The paper also identifies a prestige-biased cultural transmission channel, consistent with Henrich and Gil-White (2001), wherein non-elite masses emulate former slaveowners in positions of power.

Confederate diaspora: The approximately one million white migrants, including more than 61,000 former enslavers and 127,000 of their household kin, who left former Confederate states for the rest of the U.S. in the three decades after the Civil War, comprising on average 2.2% of destination county populations by 1900 and retaining strong cultural attachments to the Confederacy.

Confederate culture: A cluster of symbolic and material expressions that coalesced in the postbellum South, encompassing Lost Cause narratives (glorifying Confederate figures and reframing secession as a defense of states’ rights rather than slavery), public memorialization (monuments, place names, school names), United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters, Ku Klux Klan activity, and lynchings of Black people — together functioning as technologies to transmit white supremacist norms and maintain racial hierarchies.

Lost Cause: A revisionist narrative emerging after the Civil War that sought to redeem the image of the South by offering noble rationalizations for secession — emphasizing Northern aggression and states’ rights while downplaying slavery — and portraying enslaved people as content and slaveowners as generously paternalistic; central to the ideology propagated by the UDC and to Confederate memorialization.

Shift-share instrumental variable (SSIV): An identification strategy that combines the 1870 distribution of Southern white migrants across non-Southern counties (shares, reflecting historical migration networks) with predicted total Southern white outflows from 1870 to 1900 constructed from origin-county push factors via LASSO (shifts), to isolate exogenous county-level variation in Confederate diaspora exposure that is insulated from endogenous location sorting.

Sundown town: An all-white municipality where Black residents and other minorities were excluded from residing after sunset, spreading throughout the non-South from 1890 to 1960, operationalized in this paper as towns with at least 25 Black residents in 1870 having zero Black residents after 1900 (Black depopulation), representing a novel form of racial exclusion distinct from de jure Jim Crow institutions associated with the Confederacy.

Prestige-biased cultural transmission: An evolutionary transmission mechanism, formalized in Henrich and Gil-White (2001), in which non-elite populations emulate culturally salient leaders; invoked in this paper to explain how former slaveholders in positions of authority could diffuse Confederate norms to non-Southern whites who had no direct connection to the Confederacy.

Cultural entrepreneur: A migrant (especially a former slaveholder) who, by sorting into positions of public-facing authority — judges, lawyers, law enforcement, clergy, public administrators — at early stages of community formation when institutions are most malleable, actively embeds cultural norms into nascent local institutions, amplifying influence beyond their small population share.