Are DC, Maryland, and Delaware in the Northeast or the South?

[muon2]

The Census set up categories long ago for statistical purposes. State demographics may change making them more like regions other than their initial assignment. However, the time series of the Census statistics would be rendered obsolete if the states were shifted. so they stay where they are.

[muon2]

As a DC area native, I will fight to the death anybody who has the gall to insinuate Maryland and DC are somehow more Southern than Northern.

Agreed, but it's pretty crazy how Southern (Upper South variety) it gets when you go west of Fredrick or to the Eastern Shore.

The MD panhandle is more northern/mid Appalachian than Upper South. The Appalachian Regional Commission puts it in a subregion with western PA, and not with the more southern parts of the region.

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[muon2]

Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Delaware are southern in a geographical sense, a historical sense, and in terms of landscape, but they are culturally northeastern. Maryland almost joined the Confederacy, but they didn't because Abraham Lincoln had a battalion ready to assault Baltimore if it happened.

On another note, why is Missouri not considered a southern state?

MO meets the same description you just described. The latitude of KC and St Louis is the same as DC. Historically MO was a slave state and had a Governor who wanted to secede. The landscape in southern MO is akin to other mid-South states.

However, the majority of the population in MO are in its two major metro areas. Those areas are culturally Midwestern as is the rural area in the north of the state near IA.