page_title: Southern United States
section_title: Major cities
hierarchical_section_title: Southern United States / Major cities
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of the Nashville Skyline
context_page_description: The Southern United States, also known as the American South, the Southern States, or simply the South, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States. It is located between the Atlantic Ocean and the Western United States, with the Midwestern United States and Northeastern United States to its north and the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to its south.
  The South does not precisely coincide with the geographic south of the United States but is commonly defined as including the states that fought for the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. The Deep South lies entirely within the southeastern corner. California, Arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries. While the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia, continued to permit slavery during the Civil War, they remained with the Union.
context_section_description: The South was heavily rural as late as the 1940s, but now the population is increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas. The following tables show the twenty largest cities, metropolitan, and combined statistical areas in the South. Houston is the largest city in the South.
caption: Nashville
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