In 1765, London philanthropist Dr. John Fothergill remarked on the cultural differences of the British American colonies southward from Maryland and those to the north, suggesting that the Southerners were marked by "idleness and extravagance". Fothergill suggested that Southerners were more similar to the people of the Caribbean than to the colonies to the north.[27] Early in United States history, the contrasting characteristics of Southern states were acknowledged in a discussion between Thomas Jefferson and François-Jean de Chastellux. Jefferson ascribed the Southerners' "unsteady", "generous", "candid" traits to their climate, while De Chastellux claimed that Southerners' "indelible character which every nation acquires at the moment of its origin" would "always be aristocratic" not only because of slavery but also "vanity and sloth". A visiting French dignitary concurred in 1810 that American customs seemed "entirely changed" over the Potomac River, and that Southern society resembled those of the Caribbean.[27]
Northern popular press and literature in this early period of US history often used a "we"-versus-"they" dichotomy when discussing Southerners, and looked upon Southern customs as backward and a threat to progress. For instance, a 1791 article in the New York Magazine warned that the spread of Southern cockfighting was tantamount to being "assaulted" by "the enemy within" and would "rob" the nation's "honor". J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur's 1782 Letters from an American Farmer declared that although slavery had not been completely abolished in the Northern states, conditions in Southern slavery was "different... in every respect", emphasizing the contrasting treatment of slaves. Crèvecœur sought to portray Southerners as stuck in the social, cultural and economic remnants of colonialism, in contrast to the Northerners whom he considered to be representative of the distinctive culture of the new nation.[33]
Development of Anglo-American nationalism in the Southern states
The War of 1812 brought increasing awareness to the differences between Northerners and Southerners, who had opposed and supported the war respectively. The Panic of 1819 and the 1820 admission of Missouri as a slave state also exacerbated the North–South divide. In 1823, New York activist Gerrit Smith commented that there was an almost "national difference of character between the people of the Northern and the people of the Southern states." Similarly, a 1822 commentary in the North American Review suggested that Southerners were "a different race of men", "highminded and vainglorious" people who lived on the plantations.[38]
Some Southern writers in the lead up to the American Civil War (1861–1865) built on the idea of a Southern nation by claiming that secession was not based on slavery but rather on "two separate nations". These writers postulated that Southerners were descended from Norman cavaliers, Huguenots, Jacobites and other supposed "Mediterranean races" linked to the Romans, while Northerners were claimed to be descended from Anglo-Saxon serfs and other Germanic immigrants who had a supposed "hereditary hatred" against the Southerners.[39] The white planter class was believed to subscribe to a code of Southern chivalry,[40] descended from that of the Virginia Cavaliers.[41] These ethnonationalist beliefs of being a "warrior race" widely disseminated among the Southern upper class, and Southerners began to use the term "Yankee" as a slur against a so-called "Yankee race" that they associated with being "calculating, money worshipping, cowardly" or even as "hordes" and "semi-barbarian".[42] Southern ideologues also used their alleged Norman ancestors to explain their attachment to the institution of slavery, as opposed to the Northerners who were denigrated as descendants of a so-called "slave race".[42] Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and German-American political scientist Francis Lieber, who condemned the Southerners' belief in their supposed distinct ancestry, attributed the Civil War's outbreak to that belief. In 1866, Edward A. Pollard, author of the first history book on the Confederacy The Lost Cause, continued insisting that the South had to "assert its well-known superiority in civilization over the people of the North."[42] Southerners developed their ideas on nationalism on influences from the nationalist movements growing in Europe (such as the works of Johann Gottfried Herder and the constructed north–south divide between Germanic peoples and Italians). Southern ideologues, fearful of mass politics, sought to adopt the ethnic themes of the revolutions of 1848 while distancing themselves from the revolutionaries' radical liberal ideas.[43] The slaveholding elite encouraged Romantic "antimodern" narratives of Southern culture as a refuge of traditional community hospitality and chivalry to mobilize popular support from non-slaveholding White Southerners, promising to bring the South through a form of technological and economic progress without the perceived social ills of modern industrial societies.[43]
White supremacism has played a major role in the history of white Southerners, though it's development was gradual and the product of British colonialism in North America.[44][45] For the vast majority of Southern history, the black majority has been oppressed by the white majority. Beginning in 1619 with the arrival of the first African slaves in the Colony of Virginia, racial attitudes and laws restricting the rights of black Southerners gradually increased over the course of the Antebellum era. Until the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, African chattel slavery formed a crucial role in the development of white Southern cultural consciousness and was the primary cause of the formation of the Confederate States of America.[46] In the eleven-thirteen states that seceded from the United States in 1860–61 to form the Confederacy, 31% of families held at least one African American in slavery.[47] On March 21, 1861, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens gave his infamous Cornerstone Speech in which he stated the following:
"The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."[48]
During the Reconstruction era, white Southern paramilitaries such as the Ku Klux Klan, Redeemers, White League, and Red Shirts, waged a guerilla war on Federal forces and newly emancipated blacks in order to reestablish Southern Democrat control.[49][50] President Rutherford B. Hayes would go on to withdraw the last Federal troops from the South in 1877,[51] allowing for these white supremacist politicians and militias to retake control. Upon regaining power, white Southerners would once again disenfranchise and terrorize black Southerners, ushering in the Jim Crow era. Only in 1964 did the Civil Rights Act legally end Jim Crow laws which mandated the segregation of races in the Southern United States.[52][53][54] Upon white Southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton being elected to the U.S. presidency during the late 20th century, it symbolized generations of change from an Old South to New South society. Journalist Hodding Carter and State Department spokesperson during the Carter Administration stated: "The thing about the South is that it's finally multiple rather than singular in almost every respect." The transition from President Carter to President Clinton also mirrored the social and economic evolution of the South in the mid-to-late 20th century.[55]
West Indian origins of Southern slavery
The British West Indies, specifically Barbados, had a massive impact on the development of Anglo-Southern slavery. Bajan plantations served as a model for Southern plantations, specifically in South Carolina, where white Bajans were recruited to help jumpstart the colony's slave economy in the 17th century. Several waves of white Bajan settlement also occurred during the British colonial period, specifically in Virginia and the Carolinas, where a significant portion of the enslaved African population were of Bajan origin.[56][57][58]
The ideology of the Confederate States of America and Jim Crow were sources of inspiration for several prominent Nazis during the early-mid 20th century, including dictator Adolf Hitler.[62][63]
White anti-racism and pro-abolitionism in the American South has existed since the 18th century.
In the 1770s, Quaker and Moravian abolitionists helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the Upper South to free their slaves. Manumissions increased for nearly two decades. Many individual acts by slaveholders freed thousands of slaves. Slaveholders freed slaves in such numbers that the percentage of free black people in the Upper South increased from 1 to 10 percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. By 1810 three-quarters of blacks in Delaware were free. The most notable of men offering freedom was Robert Carter III of Virginia, who freed more than 450 people by "Deed of Gift", filed in 1791. This number was more slaves than any single American had freed before or after.[67] Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about the equality of men supporting the decision to set slaves free. The era's changing economy also encouraged slaveholders to release slaves. Planters were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco to mixed-crop cultivation and needed fewer slaves.[68]
By 1860, 91.7% of the blacks in Delaware and 49.7% of those in Maryland were free. Such early free families often formed the core of artisans, professionals, preachers, and teachers in future generations.[68] However, this did not signal racial equality. Though free from slavery, blacks still faced immense discrimination. For example, Delaware affirmed and reaffirmed black disenfranchisement several times throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries. Delaware's General Assembly enacted harsh black codes throughout the 19th century that restricted travel, property ownership, expression, and socialization for African Americans.[69]
Albert Parsons, a Confederate veteran turned Radical Republican civil rights activist and politician, was forced to flee Texas due to threats from the Ku Klux Klan and marriage to his mixed-race wife, Lucy. In his 1886 autobiography, Parsons stated:
"I became a Republican, & of course, had to go into politics. I incurred thereby the hate & contumely of many of my former army comrades, neighbors & the Ku Klux Klan. My political career was full of excitement & danger. I took the stump to vindicate my convictions. The lately enfranchised slaves over a large section of country came to know & idolize me as their friend & defender while on the other hand I was regarded as a political heretic & traitor by many of my former associates."[71]
The Young Patriots Organization was a poor white Southern cultural nationalist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist organization allied with the Black Panthers in Chicago in the 1970s.[72]
Influence of African-Americans and Native Americans
While all white Southerners are commonly stereotyped as being racist and harboring extremely negative attitudes towards African-Americans,[73][74] there is a long history of mixing between both groups; socially, racially, and culturally. Both groups have existed in the South since the 17th century and thus share many cultural traits. For example, some researchers believe AAVE evolved out of the dialects of poor English indentured servants who worked the fields alongside African slaves and servants.[75] In addition, many white-led abolitionist groups in the decades leading up to the American Civil War were located in the Southern states,[76][77][78]free blacks shaped the Southern backcountry alongside their white neighbors, the majority of music traditions[79][80] and cuisine[81] originating in the Southern US are of Afro-European origin, and the South has a long history of racially integratedlabor movements.[82]
Despite the existence of the Cherokee great-grandmother myth in the Southern United States, whites in some regions do have various degrees of indigenous ancestry, though mostly not Cherokee. It is believed that indigenous ancestry among Southern whites is highest in the state of Louisiana.[26][83] Whites and Native Americans in the South did frequently intermarry, mostly due to white trade with local tribes.[84][85] Most of the Southeastern Woodlands tribes are heavily intermixed with European ancestry due to these unions. Many white spouses of indigenous women also became full citizens of their spouse's nation,[86] whilst others were made members via adoption and assimilation, such as Sam Houston.[87]
Native Americans had a massive impact on white Southern culinary traditions.[88]
Academic research
White Southerners as a unique ethnic group
Sociologist William L. Smith argues that "regional identity and ethnic identity are often intertwined in a variety of interesting ways such that some scholars have viewed white southerners as an ethnic group".[89] In her book Southern Women, Caroline Matheny Dillman also documents a number of authors who posit that Southerners might constitute an ethnic group. She notes that the historian George Brown Tindall analyzed the persistence of the distinctiveness of Southern culture in The Ethnic Southerners (1976), "and referred to the South as a subculture, pointing out its ethnic and regional identity". The 1977 book The Ethnic Imperative, by Howard F. Stein and Robert F. Hill, "viewed Southerners as a special kind of white ethnicity". Dillman notes that these authors, and earlier work by John Shelton Reed, all refer to the earlier work of Lewis Killian, whose White Southerners, first published in 1970, introduced "the idea that Southerners can be viewed as an American ethnic group".[90] Killian does however note, that: "Whatever claims to ethnicity or minority status ardent 'Southernists' may have advanced, white southerners are not counted as such in official enumerations".[91]
Precursors to Killian include sociologist Erdman Beynon, who in 1938 made the observation that "there appears to be an emergent group consciousness among the southern white laborers", and economist Stuart Jamieson, who argued four years later in 1942 that Oklahomans, Arkansans and Texans who were living in the valleys of California were starting to take on the "appearance of a distinct 'ethnic group'". Beynon saw this group consciousness as deriving partly from the tendency of northerners to consider them as a homogeneous group, and Jamieson saw it as a response to the label "Okie".[92] More recently, historian Clyde N. Wilson has argued that "In the North and West, white Southerners were treated as and understood themselves to be a distinct ethnic group, referred to negatively as 'hillbillies' and 'Okies'".[93]
The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, published in 1980, includes a chapter on Southerners authored by John Shelton Reed, alongside chapters by other contributors on Appalachians and Yankees. Writing in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies, social anthropologist M. G. Smith argued that the entries do not satisfactorily indicate how these groups meet the criteria of ethnicity, and so justify inclusion in the encyclopedia.[94] Historian David L. Carlton, argues that Killian, Reed and Tindall's "ethnic approach does provide a way to understand the South as part of a vast, patchwork America, the components of which have been loath to allow their particularities to be eaten away by the corrosions of a liberal-capitalist order", nonetheless notes problems with the approach. He argues that the South is home to two ethnic communities (white and black) as well as smaller, growing ethnic groups, not just one. He argues that: "Most important, though, and most troubling, is the peculiar relationship of white southerners to the nation's history." The view of the average white Southerner, Carlton argues, is that they are quintessential Americans, and their nationalism equates "America" with the South.[95]
Academic John Shelton Reed also argues that "Southerners' differences from the American mainstream have been similar in kind, if not degree, to those of the immigrant ethnic groups".[96][97] Reed states that Southerners, as other ethnic groups, are marked by differences from the national norm, noting that they tend to be poorer, less educated, more rural, and specialize in job occupation. He argues that they tended to differ in cultural and political terms, and that their accents serve as an ethnic marker.[98]
Perhaps the most prominent similarly between white Southerners and Afrikaners is their historic support and use of racial segregation as a means of perpetuating white supremacy.[104][105]
Mestees are members of old mixed-race groups who are mostly white in ancestry, appearance, and culture.[153] Other names for these groups include: Anglo-Mestizos, Quasi-Indians, and Little Races.[154] Some of these groups, such as the Melungeons, are overwhelmingly of European descent with varying amounts of African and Native American ancestry, with little phenotypical evidence of their non-European descent existing among the younger generations.
Some regions of the South are home to communities of Irish Travelers and Romanichal from Britain and Ireland. The Romanichal, a South Asian diaspora group which migrated to Europe in the Middle Ages, have commonly been simultaneously rejected and accepted as white in Britain or categorized as "white, but not quite".[180][181] Irish Travelers, in contrast, are of entirely indigenous Irish descent.
The National Gypsy Evangelical Conference, an organization composed of ProtestantRomani-Americans, held a conference in Arkansas in 1977.[182]
It is estimated that about 10,000-40,000 Irish Travelers exist in the United States, primarily in the Southern US. Most immigrated during the Irish Famine in the mid-19th century. Groups exist in Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Georgia.[183][184]
The origins of these "German" settlers were not uniform. Palatines, Alsatians, Swiss, Moravians, Hollanders, Hessians, and even some French Protestants were the primary groups that immigrated and coalesced into the colonial era German-speaking ethnic community.[188][189] These German-speakers were often called Dutch by the Anglo colonists, as the term Dutch in this era encompassed both Dutch and German speakers, though a common misconception is that the English were unable to pronounce Deitsch or Deutsch.[188]
Following the Louisiana Purchase, there was a mass influx of Anglo-American migration into the solidly French region. Conflict ensued between the two communities, with Anglo-American influence threatening many societal and cultural norms formed under the previous French colonial government. Eventually, the use of the French language was prohibited and other assimilation efforts were pursued to Americanize the French population.[225] In recent times, there has been a major push to revive the French language within the state, though critics argue that these efforts contribute to the destruction of local dialects, as the dialect of instruction is usually Metropolitan French.[226]
Hundreds of Mexicans in Texas were lynched and murdered by Anglo-Texans between 1850 and 1930. La Matanza (English: The Slaughter) was a period of Texas history between 1910 and 1920 in which Mexican-Americans were lynched and massacred en masse.[244][245]
Middle Eastern-Americans and North African-Americans
Legally, Middle Easterners and North Africans,[251] such as Syrians, Lebanese, Moroccans, Turks, and Jews were categorized as white in the Antebellum and Jim Crow South, though this categorization has never been consistent throughout history.[252][253][254] Socially, perceptions of Middle Easterners and North Africans shifted between categorizing them as "neither white nor black", white, and Jews as racially Hebrew.[255][256] Some Middle Easterners were targeted by white supremacist mobs in the Southern United States and lynched, much like Italians. An infamous case was the lynching of Leo Frank, who was accused of murdering a white girl and dumping her body in the factory he owned. Researchers have since determined he was, in fact, completely innocent and the motivations of the lynching were steeped in growing antisemitic attitudes in the South.[257][258][259] Another case was the lynching of Lebanese immigrant, N'oula Romey, in Lake City, Florida in 1929. Romey and his wife had moved to Lake City due to constant attacks and harassment from the Ku Klux Klan and after several run in with the laws in Valdosta. The run ins did not end and one day the Sheriff of Columbia County, Florida and his deputies shot and killed Romey's wife, Fanny, over an altercation at their store. N'oula was then arrested, jailed, and murdered by a racist mob in the night.[254]
Various waves of white migration out of the Southern United States have occurred throughout history, shaping the cultures of various regions of the United States and other countries.
"Many persons who, from long habit and fondly cherished theories, have become strongly attached to the institution of African slavery, fancy that in Brazil they will find an opportunity for the permanent use of that system of labor — Brazil and the Spanish possessions being the only two slaveholding communities remaining in the civilized world," - New OrleansDaily Picayune, September 1865.[278]
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