What is History? Part 38
by Clyde N. Wilson
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A meddling Yankee is God’s worst creation; he cannot run his own affairs correctly, but is constantly interfering in the affairs of others, and he is always ready to repent of everyone’s sin, but his own. —North Carolina newspaper, 1854
Powerful ornary stock, George, powerful ornary. —”Sut Lovingood” on the Puritan Yankee
If a person lives long enough he can watch everyone forget everything they learned. —Paul Craig Roberts
We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. —Chris Hedges
Hope is not a principle of war. —Wellington
It is a certain maxim, that though great nations may be holden up by power, small territories must be maintained by justice. —Nathaniel Bacon
We know that we must march when to-morrow comes, and tramp on our destiny onward. —Thackeray
So it is that Nature makes folks; and some love books and tea, and some like Burgundy and a gallop across the country. —Thackeray
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1 Comment by jas on 29 June 2009:
“…on December 13, 1820, N. Burton wrote that men from Kentucky actually preferred Yankee wives.” (N. Burton papers, Ill State Hist Soc, quoted in James E. Davis’s “Frontier Illinois,” p. 311.
2 Comment by George on 30 June 2009:
A meddling Yankee is God’s worst creation; he cannot run his own affairs correctly, but is constantly interfering in the affairs of others, and he is always ready to repent of everyone’s sin, but his own. —North Carolina newspaper, 1854
A better crafted opinion of what ails us to this day would be hard to come by…
3 Comment by David Wihowski on 30 June 2009:
From a Wisconsinite: There are a straggling(!) few of us northerners who were tutored to be Yankees in school, who learned Yankee ways even from our parents’ examples, yet we are repenting of our arrogance and attempting to move on toward a saner more wholesome existence.
I’m trying to figure out when the good country folk of the midwest fell to Yankee-ism. I knew farmers and small town folk who were hardly Yankees, but that was 40 years ago. Now they are all busy meddling in other people’s business (plus the best they think of anything truly southern is that it is quaint but very backward).
Anyone know of a non-liberal history (or at least relatively factual) history of the midwest?
4 Comment by jas on 30 June 2009:
For David: I don’t know of one good history, but the beginning of wisdom is to put aside the Yankee-Virginian dichotomy. There is a whole Anglo-Saxon (with some German) culture area with origins in the Delaware Valley which spread straight west in the southern Midwest. Traditionally Kentucky and Arkansas (and Missouri) were considered Midwest. The free/slave state dichotomy can be misleading pre-Civil War. I know one writer who claims the worst effect of the Civil War was to split the “Old West” i.e. the Mississippi Valley, in half: formed as a cultural whole under French/Spanish influence,it was maintained by transport routes (river). The Upland South, which developed it’s final form in Tennessee, has been shown to have its major root in the Delaware Valley (NJ, PA), not the south: the same is true of the pioneer fringe culture (north and south) of shifting cultivators, originating in the Delaware Valley as an amalgamation of Forest Finn (”Swedish”) and Delaware Indian cultures: that population is associated with poorer Scotch-Irish, the the culture was not. A southern wing of the Republican Party, especially in Missouri, was not New England in origin, but of Kentucky, dominated by the Blairs and Benton: they kept St. Louis and the Mississippi in the Union. Missouri slaveowners were pro-tariff, and very dubious about a free confederacy for economic reasons. Kansas was not New Englandish in population by the time of the Civil War: over 85% of its population was from the southern Midwest (Ohio, etc). I could go on, and I can reference each statement above, but that is a bit much for a Chronicles blog…
5 Comment by jas on 1 July 2009:
For David: More to the point, check out the books in the Indiana University Press list (click on history then “Indiana and the Midwest”). Some interesting stuff there: my “Frontier Illinois” came from there. I think you might best start local: they have Mark Wyman’s “The Wisconsin Frontier,” but look at their full list. Modern history is almost invariably liberal: one just has to collect the facts, consider the conclusions and bias, and make up your own mind…preferably after reading a lot!
6 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 3 July 2009:
There are older, pre World War II histories of the Midwest, and though they all have their biases, they are better written, more intelligently thought out, and less perverse than most modern historians. A better route to understanding lies through fiction. For Wisconsin, Sterling North and Glenway Wescott are indispensable and for a peculiar perspective–Superior Polack–read my good friend Tony Bukosky’s brilliant short fiction including his first book, now back in print. For the Midwest in general, you cannot do better than to read Booth Tarkington, also Laura Ingolls Wilder and Hamlin Garland. Novelists do not offer facts but they give you a deep insight into how people felt and acted. A British social historian once told me that you could learn more about British social history from reading Austen, Thackeray, and Trollope than from all the modern social historians put together.
Alas, the Yankee/Rebel dichotomy is all too real, but the Midwest is only partly Yankee. The Southern half of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio are still southern, while areas settled by Swedes, Germans, and Poles were only thoroughly Yankeefied where Yankees were, as in Rockford, the dominant element. There is very little that is Yankee about most of Wisconsin. I’ll try to hunt up the bibliography I put together for our Summer School on the Midwest–one of the best programs but the worst attended of our events.
7 Comment by David Wihowski on 3 July 2009:
Dr. Fleming, thank you very much for the recommendations. I would very much appreciate the bibliography, if you can locate it. I guess, when I speak about Wisconsin my most recent experience is tainted by living in southeastern Wisconsin with its heavy Madison/Milwaukee influence. Once you head north and west in the state the culture is certainly much less affected by Yankees. But since around half of the state’s population is in this corner of the state I notice the more marked shift toward Yankee-style “meddling” where I live.
8 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 3 July 2009:
#6-7. I hope to take up usefully exactly these matters in my contribution to the upcoming summer school on the West.
9 Comment by David Wihowski on 4 July 2009:
#8 Unfortunately I cannot attend the summer school. I presume the materials will be available in some form after it is finished?
10 Comment by Tom Ridenour on 12 July 2009:
I’m someone who has live in both north and south for a considerable time. In addition, I worked for 8 years, spending a good amount of time in France, in both city and the country. Strange it was in France I began to see the most fundamental distinction. It is, I believe, between those in the city and those in land, or the country. Walking on dirt makes a different man than walking on asphalt or concrete. City people seem much the same nowadays every where. It was not always that way. People in southern cities were still southern in manners and culture until recent decades. Some still remain southern despite decades of yankee poison and propaganda. I’ve found there are good people everywhere living on the land–except perhaps New England. The poison remains unabated there. Has there ever been anything but madness in those accursed climes? It was the Devli’s play ground from the outset and still is.
Sadly, the farmers in the mid-west were tricked into fighting against themselves in 1861. As I said recently to a friend in Ohio, “You all sawed off the branch you were sitting on. Now, as the Empire deconstructs and tyranny and despotism show themselves daily in one outrage upon another, you all have no free republic to flee to for refuge.”
Stupid Yankee!
Being southern is a matter of the heart, not a matter of geography. Not any more, anyway. Now I’m in Texas; a special kind of Southerner, and I think that will soon become evident to all.
The Carolina paper’s statement reminds me of one article I read recently in the list of grievances in Texas’ declaration of secession in 1861. It stated the Federal government has failed to protect the border of Texas from raids by banditti and refuses to recompense Texas for the damage done as a consequence, and the border is more tenuous now than when Texas was an independent republic.
A singular comment may be said of both statements: Things ain’t changed a lot in a century and a half have they? Nope. They ain’t changed a dam bit, except in as far as they’ve gotten worse.