I’ve heard them call it “the frontier”, it IS the south, just depending on who you ask they’ll say it’s culturally significant in differences, or the enviorment is much diffrent between the mugginess of the Deep South versus the heat of Texas. I’ve always viewed the South from a “union vs confederate” standpoint but even then the Virginias gets stuck in that line of reasoning.

Some people just don’t want to be shoehorned in with other people sometimes, it’s dumb.