Cracker Culture (review)

Book Reviews McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture. University of Alabama Press, 1988. Cracker Culture is Grady McWhiney 's latest effort to correct the ethnic and cultural history of the South, heretofore mispresented as the "AngloSaxon " south by some. Earlier, Professor McWhiney was the coauthor (with Perry D. Jamieson) of Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage, a work in which he accounts for the South's defeat in the Civil War by the Southern commanders' commitment to offensive warfare, which commitment was in turn attributed to the fiery Celtic heritage of the South. The present work, happily, is not burdened with such an explicit (and simplistic) thesis. Cracker Culture is essentially an ethnographic study, and in it Professor McWhiney maintains that the South was settled to a great extent by Celts (Scots, Irish, Welsh, and "Scotch-Irish") and it is to this element in its population that most of the distinctive characteristics of Southern culture can be traced. ComSared to the more straitlaced English few Englanders, McWhiney portrays southerners as easygoing, bibulous, convivial , and hospitable. They also prefer corn, in both the liquid and granular state, to potatoes. The oook is not a simple eulogy, however, for the author dutifully cites some of the shortcomings of the Celto-Southerns, but his estimation is clearly favorable to the Celts over all. The book is well-written and advances its theses persuasivley, although occasionally a leap of faith is required. In particular, I found the concept of happygo -lucky Presbyterians a difficult one to sustain. Celts have not always fared so well at the hands of other writers. A few years ago the Gonzo-journalist Hunter Thompson accounted for the viciousness of the "Hell's Angels" motorcylce gang and their being of Appalachian ScotchIrish descent with the natural depravity of the breed. In Guy Chapman's memoir of World War I trench warfare, note is taken of the spirit of Scots' regiments in the attack, and equal spirit in the retreat. "They run like hell both ways," said Chapman. In recent years we have also occasionally been exposed to the malignity of the Reverend Ian Paisley of Belfast , and this has done nothing to advance the status of the Scotch-Irish. As a child I would sometimes ask my father what we were, and he would always answer "Scotch-Irish," and when I would ask "what are Scotch-Irish?" he would usually say something deprecatory . My father, it turns out, was probably wrong on both counts. We were not Scotch-Irish and Scotch-Irish is not a synonym for "White Trash." Cracker Culture is a fine corrective to many such mistaken ideas. Well-written and wellresearched , and though its thesis may not be conclusively proved, it may serve as a restraint of rampant Anglo-Saxonism. -Walter M. Odum 59 ...