In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I Settlement HISTORIANS, in their much-argued efforts to determine the extent to which the antebellum North and South were similar or different,l have paid too little attention to the abundant observations of contemporaries. Most of the people who traveled in antebellum America-Northerners, Southerners, and Europeans-concluded that the South and the North were significantly different places with incongruous inhabitants and cultures. "Thus far all is new, all is strange," a young New Yorker wrote during a visit to the southern United States in 1843-44. His first impression-that in the South he was among foreigners-never altered. "Life here is so different from that at the north," he declared. "I felt ... that I was indeed a stranger in a strange land." A Southerner, in turn, spoke of the northern United States as a "strange land" that he could never understand; another Southerner called the North "a totally foreign country," and a third wrote from Boston in 1854: "I long to return to the South. Kind as many persons have been to me here, I am not at home. I feel as an alien." An Englishman noted: "one could scarcely fail to remark how essentially the characters of the Northern and Southern people differ." Southerners, said a Scot, "are quite a distinct race from the 'Yankees.' " "The manners and habits of Northerners," insisted another foreigner, "are strikingly distinct 1. On this continuing dispute, see such recent works as James M. McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at An Old Question," Civil War History 29 {1983i, 230-44; Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney, "The South from Self-Sufficiency to Peonage: An Interpretation," American Historical Review 85 {I 980j, 1095-1 II8; Edward Pessen, "How DifI ferent from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South?" ibid. II 1949 ; Thomas B. Alexander, Stanley L. Engerman, Forrest McDonald, Grady McWhineY,and Edward Pessen, "Antebellum North and South in Comparative Perspective: A Discussion," ibid. 115066 ; Forrest McDonald, Grady McWhiney, and Edward Pessen, "Communications ," ibid. 86 {1981i, 243-45. Cracker Culture from there fellow citizens to the southward."2 The number of observers who recorded such statements is endless. To understand why Southerners and Northerners were different from and often antagonistic toward each other-indeed, to understand the Old South-one must put aside some myths. The most important myth to recognize and to discard is the belief that southern ways were English ways. How, one might ask, could emphasizing English influence on the South be a mistake when "everyone knows" that the vast majority of southern whites are and always have been of Anglo-Saxon origins; when a distinguished southern historian can insist that the "English influence [on the South] was powerful"; or when another can state that "the South is the habitat of the quintessential WASP" and call it "the biggest single WASP nest this side of the Atlantic"P The answer is that both the common wisdom and the scholars are wrong. There has been all too little understanding of the ethnic background of white Southerners. "They were mostly transplanted Englishmen with a scattering of continental Europeans/' writes one author, who supports his argument with a quotation from Stephen Vincent Benet: "'And those who came were resolved to be Englishmen , Gone to the World's End, but English everyone.' ,,4 A different writer claims that both the North and the South "were peopled by Englishmen,"5 and two others emphasize "the gap between AngloSaxon and African in the South.,,6 Accounts of the South's past usually make such vague or sweeping references to cultural ethnicity that readers are likely to be confused over who are and who not are Anglo-Saxons. For example, the authors of a popular work praise "the German colonists of the South" 2. Henry Benjamin Whipple, Bishop Whipple'S Southern Diary, 1843-1844, ed. Lester B. Shippee IMinneapolis, 1937), 13,26, 15; Charles S. Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region: Beniamin L. C. Wailes IDurham, N.C., 1938), 183; Southern Quarterly Review 2611854), 432; Paul H. Hayne to his wife, September 16,1854, Paul Hamilton Hayne Papers, Duke University; Catherine C. Hopley, Life in the South From the . .. Spring of 1860 to August 186211863; reprint, 2 vols., New York, 19741, I: 143; William Thomson, A Tradesman's Travels, in the United States and Canada, in the Years 1840, 41 eV 42 IEdinburgh, 18421,46; Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Rambler in North America . . . 12 vols., London, 1835), 1:60-61. See also...

Share