The people who settled America came from different parts of England, as well as France, the Netherlands and Spain and brought with them their own social, religious and governmental systems. They forever imprinted them on the parts of the New World they colonized. "There isn't and never has been one America." The regions of North America developed differently; they championed different goals, and honored different virtues. Some were WASP and others ethnic and pluralistic. "All of them continue to champion some idea of their founding ideals in the present day. The United States is a federation comprised of the whole or part of eleven regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with one another."
'Yankeedom' was founded by the Calvinists. Yankeedom believes in education, the possibilities of government, is accepting of immigrants, respectful of learning and strives to build a better society. It extends from New England to New York, to the northern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and into the eastern Dakotas. 'New Netherland' is essentially NYC and the surrounding parts of NJ, LI, Westchester and Connecticut that focus on global trading, and is multi-ethnic, multi-religious, materialistic, and mercantile. It has a profound tolerance of diversity. The 'Midlands' was founded by Quakers, is pluralistic, indifferent to the role of government, speaks the standard American dialect, and is a swing vote in every national debate. It spread from southeastern Pennsylvania to southern Jersey, northern Delaware and Maryland, central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. 'Tidewater' was cavalier Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware and northeastern North Carolina. "Tidewater elites played a central role in the foundation of the US and were responsible for many of the aristocratic inflections in the Constitution, including the Electoral College and Senate." 'Greater Appalachia' was founded by the Scots-Irish who settled in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and the hill country of Texas. The culture is deeply committed to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. When asked their nationality or ethnicity, most people from Appalachia will say American. The 'Deep South' was founded by Caribbean slavers and extended from Charleston across the Confederacy into Texas. After losing the Civil War, it became the center of states rights, segregation, and labor and environmental deregulation. It is locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom, New Netherland and the Left Coast for the future of the country. 'New France' is Quebec province and portions of Louisiana, where the Acadians settled after the British expelled them from maritime Canada. 'El Norte' is the oldest Euro-American nation and encompasses a hundred miles north and south of the southern border. The 'Left Coast' is a Chilean shaped coastal region stretching from central California to Juneau, Alaska. It is Yankeedom's closest ally. The 'Far West' is high and dry, the region where the nation's reliance on farmer stakeholders failed because of its arid climate. It was developed by the government and large corporations. It is virtually all of the mountain time zone in America and Canada and is still semi-dependent on outside forces. 'First Nation' is the resurgent native population recovering territory mostly in northern Canada. Perhaps the most interesting observation the author makes in the introduction is that these foundational cultures have not been materially changed by immigration or migration. The newcomers tend to adapt.
The Spanish settled the southwestern US a century before the English arrived on the Atlantic coast. The wealth Spain accumulated in Latin America fueled its wars against the Protestant Reformation. A legacy of those aggressions was the hatred of the English and Dutch for the Spaniards and a weakening of Spain in Europe and America. That weakness was manifested in El Norte by the lack of centralized control of the far flung province in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.The French too preceded the English in Acadia and Quebec. New France strove to work with and assimilate the natives, leading to a society that was as much aboriginal as French by the mid-eighteenth century.
Two very distinct nations founded at the same time were Tidewater and Yankeedom. The colonization of Virginia succeeded because the ease of tobacco-growing attracted people and money. They were the Cavaliers who supported the King in the Civil War, believed in the supremacy of the established church, were aristocrats desirous of establishing a traditional feudal system and Norman, not Anglo-Saxon. Tobacco cultivation was labor intensive, and probably 80% of the colonists were indentured servants on three-year contracts. It was a society of haves and have nots who were without any political rights. Rights were earned or given and not naturally inherent. In the eighteenth century, slavery grew from 10% to 40% of the population and helped perpetuate the southern system. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Massachusetts, the settlers of Yankeedom, could not have been more different. Opposed to Anglicanism and hostile to privilege, they were educated, skilled, egalitarian and democratic. Everyone had rights and responsibilities in a self-governing society. This eventually led to the strongest belief in the power of government to do good. Universal public education was established in the seventeenth century. It was the seedbed of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
New Amsterdam "was an unabashedly commercial settlement with little concern for social cohesion or the creation of a model society." The Netherlands itself was the commercial center of the world, home to toleration and religious freedom, known for its' great universities and diversity. The colony was founded on the same principles. It succeeded for six decades before being incorporated into the English crown by James, Duke of York. Later, as James II, he set out to impose a feudal regime on New York, New Jersey and New England and levied tobacco and sugar taxes against Tidewater and Charleston, respectively. The response was swift. In Boston, 2000 militiamen deposed the Royal Governor. Revolt claimed New York, but soon the news of the Glorious Revolution reached America, ending the revolutions of 1689.
Charleston, and the Deep South were settled by the sons and grandsons of the founders of Barbados. It "was the richest and most horrifying society in the English speaking world. Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror." They were Anglicans, aristocrats, and brutal suppressors of an allegedly inferior race. The culture spread to the Mississippi and beyond. The Quakers settled the Midlands with a culture that was tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, religious and deeply skeptical of government. They established Philadelphia, granted the vote to all men, and encouraged the success of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Appalachia was founded by the Scots-Irish Borderlanders, a proud, independent and disturbingly violent people. They arrived in waves in the eighteenth century fleeing upheavals at home. Destitute and land hungry, they went straight to the backcountry. They spread from western Pennsylvania south in the mountains. It was said that the highlands resembled the lawless frontiers of Scotland.
The American Revolution was more of a temporary partnership against British oppression than a unified rally for freedom. The Midlands and New Netherland did not rebel at all. Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater and the South had very little in common. They cooperated to overcome an existential threat. New England was unified and the first to rebel. In Virginia, it was the up-country Piedmont region with Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Mason that stood with the Yankees. Greater Appalachia knew that they wanted to go west and were more than willing to fight. The Deep South was interested in any status quo that would keep the slaves in check. The Yankees of New England chased the British out of Boston and had achieved virtual independence as the war began. NYC was the home of the British army and fleet and diametrically opposed to the war. Indeed, half the population left when independence was granted. The Deep South fought because they feared the British might attempt a slave uprising. The Tidewater gentry were in favor of revolt, but it was the Borderlanders in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas who fought and eventually defeated the British southern strategy. A decade after hostilities ended, a series of compromises led to the US Constitution.
The America that moved west in the 18th century was led by the nations of Yankeedom, the Midlands, Greater Appalachia and the Deep South. The Yankees stayed to the north and effectively spread their culture as far west as Iowa. They emphasized their belief in education, the pursuit of the common good, a strong church, and would form the backbone of the nascent Republican party. The Midlanders spread their pluralistic society west and just south of the Yankees. "The Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, minding their own business." The Midlanders were joined by hundreds of thousands of German immigrants with similar cultural orientations. Greater Appalachia spread farther and faster than the other nations and soon dominated the national government. They were rural, spurned education, didn't like taxes and deplored Yankee proselytizing. They were Jacksonian Democrats who liked their government light and individual freedom maximized. They had a bilateral relation with God in lieu of formal churches. The Deep South expanded west on the back of the burgeoning cotton trade. The southerners believed slavery was ordained by God and that their slavocracy was superior in every way to the teeming ignorant masses of the north. They believed they were Norman cavaliers and the northerners mere Anglo-Saxon serfs.
By 1830, there were twice as many illegal Americans in Texas as there were Tejanos. El Norte was about to succumb. Texas achieved independence six years later. The Mexican-American War brought the vast northern portion of Mexico into the American realm. The Left Coast was founded by Yankees who arrived from the sea. They dominated the coast north from Monterey, while the interior was settled by Appalachians arriving overland, both groups looking somewhat condescendingly on the El Norte culture to their south.
At the midpoint of the 19th century, the demographic struggle was between the Deep South and Yankeedom, neither of which could abide the other's terms, as they contended for domination of the national government. Immigration and the admission of the west coast states set the stage for the Yankees to win, leaving the south with secession as its only option. New Netherland supported the south because of their commercial ties. The Midlands were relatively ambivalent about slavery and secession. Fort Sumter turned the tide in both nations and they willing joined the Yankees. The North won, but Reconstruction essentially failed, and the Deep South was modified, but not changed.
None of the cultures that spread from the Atlantic to the middle of the continent succeeded in the Far West. Aridity and altitude prevented subsistence farming. Only the outside forces of railroads, mining companies and the federal construction of dams were able to develop and influence the region. "The region became a colonial dependency of an industrial empire." The West developed an antipathy for government, big business and Wall Street that led to decades of populist support for labor unions and the Democrats. Liberalism's turn to social issues and environmental concerns reversed that political trend in the second half of the 20th century. Today, the region is held together by its outright hostility to federal power.
The reason generations of immigrants effected, but did not change, underlying cultures, is that they primarily went to New Netherland and the Midlands, both nations multi-cultural, tolerant and respectful of diversity. Yankeedom accommodated immigration by relentlessly pursuing education, fostering the Pilgrim founding myth and emphasizing the importance of hard work.
The one thing that Reconstruction did accomplish was unifying the South against the North. Appalachia, Tidewater and the Deep South were unified in their desire to retain the antebellum society and succeeded in doing so. Their antipathy to Yankeedom's desire to improve society at their expense was absolute. The Evangelicals took over in the south and promulgated their anti-education, and anti-science philosophies. The North assumed that the fire-and-brimstone crowd would stumble over their irrational beliefs. They were wrong. Throughout the 20th century, their intolerant culture grew and prospered. Mid-century brought culture clashes to the north and the south. African-Americans rebelled and with northern assistance achieved civil rights. The youth of the north turned agains the establishment. Weakened at home, the Dixiecrat elites were unable to stop the youth movement's ideas from propagating, but they have been fighting back ever since. The latest cultural wars are an extension of this age-old split. Environmentalism is almost exclusively a northern issue. The Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and gay marriage all have distinct regional differences. The use of American military power breaks down again along the same lines. "US foreign policy is Civil War by other means."
This book was written in 2011 and states that the north and the west coast are primarily Democratic. Dixie block voters back conservatives. The two blocs have stood in near-constant monolithic opposition to each other leaving political power alternating based on the voting in the three swing nations of the Midlands, the Far West and El Norte. The Midlands straddle the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri and backed FDR, Reagan and Obama. In the Far West, they voted with the northerners when they were controlled by outside interests and with the Dixiecrats for the last half a century. Recently and going forward, the Hispanics of Norteno have, and will, play a more outsized role in electoral politics. States with heavy Hispanic populations moved some purple states in the southwest into Obama's column. The author closes with the rather discouraging thought that the US likely will not hold together. And, his pessimism hasn't lived through the last eight years. He posits perhaps the various nations consolidating with their Canadian or Mexican counterparts and the disintegration of the Union. I certainly hope that not to be the case.
For me, this has been a profoundly important learning experience. A decade or so ago, I read David Hackett Fischer's 'Albion Seed' which dealt with what he called the folkways of the Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers and the Scots-Irish. At 899 pages, he delves deeply into the culture of the four groups and discusses education, architecture, child rearing and just about anything you can think of. He is a Pulitzer winner and his book is esteemed. This book, written by a journalist, is only 314 pages and focuses on politics, covers other groups and goes further afield geographically. It was well-received, but not honored the way Fischer's book was. That said, I am not an academic and I believe this has provided me with a much better insight into our past and our present. This past fall while driving through Iowa, I asked myself how did such a far away place send soldiers to the Civil War. I learned here that they were part of the Yankee diaspora and were naturals to rally to the Union flag. We all see history through our own experiences. As a New Yorker from a blue-collar background, albeit expanded to include a mid-western upper class adulthood, I bring a worldview that is profoundly different from someone from a different culture. I fully understand that today and suggest to my friends, that this is a must read.
'Yankeedom' was founded by the Calvinists. Yankeedom believes in education, the possibilities of government, is accepting of immigrants, respectful of learning and strives to build a better society. It extends from New England to New York, to the northern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and into the eastern Dakotas. 'New Netherland' is essentially NYC and the surrounding parts of NJ, LI, Westchester and Connecticut that focus on global trading, and is multi-ethnic, multi-religious, materialistic, and mercantile. It has a profound tolerance of diversity. The 'Midlands' was founded by Quakers, is pluralistic, indifferent to the role of government, speaks the standard American dialect, and is a swing vote in every national debate. It spread from southeastern Pennsylvania to southern Jersey, northern Delaware and Maryland, central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. 'Tidewater' was cavalier Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware and northeastern North Carolina. "Tidewater elites played a central role in the foundation of the US and were responsible for many of the aristocratic inflections in the Constitution, including the Electoral College and Senate." 'Greater Appalachia' was founded by the Scots-Irish who settled in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and the hill country of Texas. The culture is deeply committed to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. When asked their nationality or ethnicity, most people from Appalachia will say American. The 'Deep South' was founded by Caribbean slavers and extended from Charleston across the Confederacy into Texas. After losing the Civil War, it became the center of states rights, segregation, and labor and environmental deregulation. It is locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom, New Netherland and the Left Coast for the future of the country. 'New France' is Quebec province and portions of Louisiana, where the Acadians settled after the British expelled them from maritime Canada. 'El Norte' is the oldest Euro-American nation and encompasses a hundred miles north and south of the southern border. The 'Left Coast' is a Chilean shaped coastal region stretching from central California to Juneau, Alaska. It is Yankeedom's closest ally. The 'Far West' is high and dry, the region where the nation's reliance on farmer stakeholders failed because of its arid climate. It was developed by the government and large corporations. It is virtually all of the mountain time zone in America and Canada and is still semi-dependent on outside forces. 'First Nation' is the resurgent native population recovering territory mostly in northern Canada. Perhaps the most interesting observation the author makes in the introduction is that these foundational cultures have not been materially changed by immigration or migration. The newcomers tend to adapt.
The Spanish settled the southwestern US a century before the English arrived on the Atlantic coast. The wealth Spain accumulated in Latin America fueled its wars against the Protestant Reformation. A legacy of those aggressions was the hatred of the English and Dutch for the Spaniards and a weakening of Spain in Europe and America. That weakness was manifested in El Norte by the lack of centralized control of the far flung province in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.The French too preceded the English in Acadia and Quebec. New France strove to work with and assimilate the natives, leading to a society that was as much aboriginal as French by the mid-eighteenth century.
Two very distinct nations founded at the same time were Tidewater and Yankeedom. The colonization of Virginia succeeded because the ease of tobacco-growing attracted people and money. They were the Cavaliers who supported the King in the Civil War, believed in the supremacy of the established church, were aristocrats desirous of establishing a traditional feudal system and Norman, not Anglo-Saxon. Tobacco cultivation was labor intensive, and probably 80% of the colonists were indentured servants on three-year contracts. It was a society of haves and have nots who were without any political rights. Rights were earned or given and not naturally inherent. In the eighteenth century, slavery grew from 10% to 40% of the population and helped perpetuate the southern system. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Massachusetts, the settlers of Yankeedom, could not have been more different. Opposed to Anglicanism and hostile to privilege, they were educated, skilled, egalitarian and democratic. Everyone had rights and responsibilities in a self-governing society. This eventually led to the strongest belief in the power of government to do good. Universal public education was established in the seventeenth century. It was the seedbed of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
New Amsterdam "was an unabashedly commercial settlement with little concern for social cohesion or the creation of a model society." The Netherlands itself was the commercial center of the world, home to toleration and religious freedom, known for its' great universities and diversity. The colony was founded on the same principles. It succeeded for six decades before being incorporated into the English crown by James, Duke of York. Later, as James II, he set out to impose a feudal regime on New York, New Jersey and New England and levied tobacco and sugar taxes against Tidewater and Charleston, respectively. The response was swift. In Boston, 2000 militiamen deposed the Royal Governor. Revolt claimed New York, but soon the news of the Glorious Revolution reached America, ending the revolutions of 1689.
Charleston, and the Deep South were settled by the sons and grandsons of the founders of Barbados. It "was the richest and most horrifying society in the English speaking world. Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror." They were Anglicans, aristocrats, and brutal suppressors of an allegedly inferior race. The culture spread to the Mississippi and beyond. The Quakers settled the Midlands with a culture that was tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, religious and deeply skeptical of government. They established Philadelphia, granted the vote to all men, and encouraged the success of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Appalachia was founded by the Scots-Irish Borderlanders, a proud, independent and disturbingly violent people. They arrived in waves in the eighteenth century fleeing upheavals at home. Destitute and land hungry, they went straight to the backcountry. They spread from western Pennsylvania south in the mountains. It was said that the highlands resembled the lawless frontiers of Scotland.
The American Revolution was more of a temporary partnership against British oppression than a unified rally for freedom. The Midlands and New Netherland did not rebel at all. Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater and the South had very little in common. They cooperated to overcome an existential threat. New England was unified and the first to rebel. In Virginia, it was the up-country Piedmont region with Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Mason that stood with the Yankees. Greater Appalachia knew that they wanted to go west and were more than willing to fight. The Deep South was interested in any status quo that would keep the slaves in check. The Yankees of New England chased the British out of Boston and had achieved virtual independence as the war began. NYC was the home of the British army and fleet and diametrically opposed to the war. Indeed, half the population left when independence was granted. The Deep South fought because they feared the British might attempt a slave uprising. The Tidewater gentry were in favor of revolt, but it was the Borderlanders in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas who fought and eventually defeated the British southern strategy. A decade after hostilities ended, a series of compromises led to the US Constitution.
The America that moved west in the 18th century was led by the nations of Yankeedom, the Midlands, Greater Appalachia and the Deep South. The Yankees stayed to the north and effectively spread their culture as far west as Iowa. They emphasized their belief in education, the pursuit of the common good, a strong church, and would form the backbone of the nascent Republican party. The Midlanders spread their pluralistic society west and just south of the Yankees. "The Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, minding their own business." The Midlanders were joined by hundreds of thousands of German immigrants with similar cultural orientations. Greater Appalachia spread farther and faster than the other nations and soon dominated the national government. They were rural, spurned education, didn't like taxes and deplored Yankee proselytizing. They were Jacksonian Democrats who liked their government light and individual freedom maximized. They had a bilateral relation with God in lieu of formal churches. The Deep South expanded west on the back of the burgeoning cotton trade. The southerners believed slavery was ordained by God and that their slavocracy was superior in every way to the teeming ignorant masses of the north. They believed they were Norman cavaliers and the northerners mere Anglo-Saxon serfs.
By 1830, there were twice as many illegal Americans in Texas as there were Tejanos. El Norte was about to succumb. Texas achieved independence six years later. The Mexican-American War brought the vast northern portion of Mexico into the American realm. The Left Coast was founded by Yankees who arrived from the sea. They dominated the coast north from Monterey, while the interior was settled by Appalachians arriving overland, both groups looking somewhat condescendingly on the El Norte culture to their south.
At the midpoint of the 19th century, the demographic struggle was between the Deep South and Yankeedom, neither of which could abide the other's terms, as they contended for domination of the national government. Immigration and the admission of the west coast states set the stage for the Yankees to win, leaving the south with secession as its only option. New Netherland supported the south because of their commercial ties. The Midlands were relatively ambivalent about slavery and secession. Fort Sumter turned the tide in both nations and they willing joined the Yankees. The North won, but Reconstruction essentially failed, and the Deep South was modified, but not changed.
None of the cultures that spread from the Atlantic to the middle of the continent succeeded in the Far West. Aridity and altitude prevented subsistence farming. Only the outside forces of railroads, mining companies and the federal construction of dams were able to develop and influence the region. "The region became a colonial dependency of an industrial empire." The West developed an antipathy for government, big business and Wall Street that led to decades of populist support for labor unions and the Democrats. Liberalism's turn to social issues and environmental concerns reversed that political trend in the second half of the 20th century. Today, the region is held together by its outright hostility to federal power.
The reason generations of immigrants effected, but did not change, underlying cultures, is that they primarily went to New Netherland and the Midlands, both nations multi-cultural, tolerant and respectful of diversity. Yankeedom accommodated immigration by relentlessly pursuing education, fostering the Pilgrim founding myth and emphasizing the importance of hard work.
The one thing that Reconstruction did accomplish was unifying the South against the North. Appalachia, Tidewater and the Deep South were unified in their desire to retain the antebellum society and succeeded in doing so. Their antipathy to Yankeedom's desire to improve society at their expense was absolute. The Evangelicals took over in the south and promulgated their anti-education, and anti-science philosophies. The North assumed that the fire-and-brimstone crowd would stumble over their irrational beliefs. They were wrong. Throughout the 20th century, their intolerant culture grew and prospered. Mid-century brought culture clashes to the north and the south. African-Americans rebelled and with northern assistance achieved civil rights. The youth of the north turned agains the establishment. Weakened at home, the Dixiecrat elites were unable to stop the youth movement's ideas from propagating, but they have been fighting back ever since. The latest cultural wars are an extension of this age-old split. Environmentalism is almost exclusively a northern issue. The Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and gay marriage all have distinct regional differences. The use of American military power breaks down again along the same lines. "US foreign policy is Civil War by other means."
This book was written in 2011 and states that the north and the west coast are primarily Democratic. Dixie block voters back conservatives. The two blocs have stood in near-constant monolithic opposition to each other leaving political power alternating based on the voting in the three swing nations of the Midlands, the Far West and El Norte. The Midlands straddle the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri and backed FDR, Reagan and Obama. In the Far West, they voted with the northerners when they were controlled by outside interests and with the Dixiecrats for the last half a century. Recently and going forward, the Hispanics of Norteno have, and will, play a more outsized role in electoral politics. States with heavy Hispanic populations moved some purple states in the southwest into Obama's column. The author closes with the rather discouraging thought that the US likely will not hold together. And, his pessimism hasn't lived through the last eight years. He posits perhaps the various nations consolidating with their Canadian or Mexican counterparts and the disintegration of the Union. I certainly hope that not to be the case.
For me, this has been a profoundly important learning experience. A decade or so ago, I read David Hackett Fischer's 'Albion Seed' which dealt with what he called the folkways of the Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers and the Scots-Irish. At 899 pages, he delves deeply into the culture of the four groups and discusses education, architecture, child rearing and just about anything you can think of. He is a Pulitzer winner and his book is esteemed. This book, written by a journalist, is only 314 pages and focuses on politics, covers other groups and goes further afield geographically. It was well-received, but not honored the way Fischer's book was. That said, I am not an academic and I believe this has provided me with a much better insight into our past and our present. This past fall while driving through Iowa, I asked myself how did such a far away place send soldiers to the Civil War. I learned here that they were part of the Yankee diaspora and were naturals to rally to the Union flag. We all see history through our own experiences. As a New Yorker from a blue-collar background, albeit expanded to include a mid-western upper class adulthood, I bring a worldview that is profoundly different from someone from a different culture. I fully understand that today and suggest to my friends, that this is a must read.
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