American Midwest
In the minds of White Southerners, especially those in the Deep South, the “Yankees” are the people who live in the Northern States, which is loosely defined as the Northeast and Midwest beyond the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.
The Midwest is considered everything beyond the Ohio River. Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia were never part of the Confederacy. In spite of this, these three states are never associated with the Midwest around here.
Southerners intuitively define the border of “Dixie,” culturally speaking, as the northern border of the Cracker Nation, and geographically speaking, as the Ohio River. The Southern people are the Scots-Irish Crackers, the Tidewater Cavaliers, and the Carolina Chivalry.
The truth is more complicated: the Cracker Nation settled large swathes of Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana, and Southern Ohio. Pennsyltucky was also the cultural heartland of the Cracker Nation – the launching pad for the conquest of the Southern Backcountry.
In the War Between the States, the “Copperheads” and “Butternuts” lived in this area. The Yankees colonized the Upper Midwest where they dominated Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
But what about the people who settled the Midwest who were neither Yankees or Crackers? This is really insightful excerpt:
Nineteenth-century visitors ofter remarked on the difference between the areas north and south of the old National Road, an early highway that bisected Ohio and which is now called U.S. 40. North of the road, houses were said to be substantial and well maintained, with well-fed livestock outside and literate, well-schooled inhabitants within. Village greens, white church steeples, town hall belfries, and green-shuttered houses were the norm. South of the road, farm buildings were unpainted, the people were poorer and less educated, and the better homes were built with brick in Greco-Roman style. “As you travel north across Ohio,” Ohio State Univeresity dean Harlan Hatcher wrote in 1945, “you feel that you have been transported from Virginia to Connecticut.” There were exceptions (Yankees skipped over the marshlands of Indiana and northeastern Ohio en route to Michigan and Illinois), and between Appalachian “Virginia” and Yankee “Connecticut” one passed through a Midland transition zone. But the general observation holds true: the place we called “the Midwest” is actually divided into east-west cultural bands running all the way out to the Mississippi River and beyond.
Foreign immigrants to the Midwest often chose where to settle based on their degree of affinity or hostility to the dominant culture, and vice versa. The first major wave was German, and, not surprisingly, many of them joined their countrymen in the Midlands. Those who did not faced a choice between the Yankees and the Appalachian folk; few opted to settle in areas controlled by the later.
Swedes and other Scandinavians, for their part, were comfortable with the Yankees, with whom they shared a commitment to frugality, sobriety, and civic responsibility; a hostility to slavery; and an acceptance of a state run church. “The Scandinavians are the ‘New Englanders’ of the Old World,” a Congregational missionary in the Midwest informed his colleagues. “We can as confidently rely upon them to help American Christians rightly [make] … ‘America for Christ’ as we can rely upon the good old stock of Massachusetts.
Other groups who fundamentally disagreed with New England values avoided the region on account of the Yankees’ reputation for minding other people’s business and pressuring newcomers to conform to their cultural norms. Catholics – whether Irish, south German, or Italian – did not appreciate the Yankee educational system, correctly recognizing that the schools were designed to assimilate their children into Yankee culture. In areas where Catholic immigrants cohabited with Yankees, the newcomers created their own parallel system of parochial schools precisely to protect their children from the Yankee mold. Yankees often reacted with hostility, denouncing Catholic immigrants as unwitting tools of a Vatican-directed conspiracy to bring down the republic. Whenever possible, Catholic immigrants chose to live in the more tolerant, multicultural Midlands or in individualistic Appalachia, where moral crusaders were looked upon as self righteous and irritating. Even German Protestants found themselves at odds with their Yankee neighbors, who would try to pressure them into giving up their brewing traditions and beer gardens in favor of a solemn, austere observance of the Sabbath. Multiculturalism wouldn’t become a Yankee hallmark until much later, after Puritan values ceased to be seen as essential to promoting the common good.
Political scientists investigating voting patterns have probed electoral records dating back to the early nineteenth century, matching polling-place returns with demographic information about each precinct. The results have been startling. Previous assumptions about class or occupation being the key factors influencing voter choices have turned out to be completely wrong, with the nineteenth-century Midwest providing some of the most intriguing evidence that ethnographic origins trumped all other considerations from 1850 onward. Poor white German Catholic miners in northern Wisconsin tended to vote entirely different from poor white English Methodist miners in the same area. English Congregationalists tended to vote alike regardless of whether they lived in cities or on farms. Scandinavian immigrants voted with native-born Yankees in opposition to candidates and policies preferred by immigrant Irish Catholics or native-born Southern Baptists of Appalachian origin.
As the nation careened toward civil war in the 1850s, areas first settled by Yankees gravitated to the new Republican Party. Counties dominated by immigrants from New England or Scandinavia were the strongest Republican supporters, generally backed by German Protestants. This made Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota reliably Republican straight through the mid-twentieth century; the other states split along national lines. Later, when the Republicans became champions in the fight against civil rights, Yankee-dominated states and counties in the Midwest flipped en masse to the Democrats, just as their colleagues in New England did. The outlines of the Western Reserve are still visible on a county-by-county map of the 2000, 2004, or 2008 presidential elections.
Truth comes out.
There is really no such thing as the “Midwest” – there is the Cracker Midwest, the Yankee Midwest, and “Nation of Immigrants” which was sandwiched in between the two.
Immediately, this explains the unusual deviancy of Indiana which persists to the present day, as well as the history of Ohio and Illinois, which had “Jim Crow” laws in the Antebellum period when those states were dominated by Appalachian Crackers who shared the Border South antipathy to negroes.
Like Vermont and New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Minnesota never passed anti-miscegenation laws or segregation laws. Iowa repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1851. Ohio and Illinois repealed their black codes after they started to fill upon with European immigrants.
This also explains the Antebellum alliance between Southern Whites and Northern Catholics in the Democratic Party. The “Know-Nothings” were overwhelmingly Yankees who saw the Catholics as part of a Vatican conspiracy to enslave Protestant Yankeeland.
The Irish rioted in New York City because they didn’t want to be sent to the frontlines in Virginia to fight for negro equality. The Georgia Irish who had settled in Savannah and Dublin ended up tragically shooting the Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg.
The Irish of New Orleans also rioted against Reconstruction in New Orleans. See David Gleason’s The Irish in the South, 1815 to 1877.
The Irish integrated into southern society without abandoning their ethnic identity. They displayed their loyalty by fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War and in particular by opposing the Radical Reconstruction that followed. By 1877, they were a unique part of the “Solid South.” Unlike the Irish in other parts of the United States, the Irish in the South had to fit into a regional culture as well as American culture in general. By following their attempts to become southerners, we learn much about the unique experience of ethnicity in the American South.
In Dixie, the Irish settled in a caste based society that was constructed around the color line, and since the Irish were perceived as “White,” they zealously embraced their White identity which eroded the difference between the “Protestant Irish” and “Catholic Irish.”
In the North, the Irish assimilated into a different culture. Just watch Hardball With Chris Matthews, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, and the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC tonight.
Note: The most Southern of movies, Gone With The Wind, is wrapped up in the Irish experience in the South. Tara, Scarlett’s plantation, is named after the ancient capital of Ireland.
The real story is *always* conflict between white groups. Not racial conflict, not even much economic conflict, although that is easier to organize around.
“White people” in the perjorative- as it is used by all but race realists- means “non-elite white people”, those who refuse to cooperate and thus are the enemy. Which is why people like Tim Wise can talk unself-consciously about how much white people suck.
This leads to the unwarranted assumption by race realists that these non-elite white people can actually be considered a cohesive group that can be unified. But as we see the differences are huge, and likely irreconciable.
We’re getting to the story of where all this talk about “White people” came from in North America – the origins of the phenomena called “White Nationalism.”
For hundreds of years, the Cracker Nation has dreamed of expelling the negroes from the Dixie in the same way that Andrew Jackson deported the Southeastern Indians to Oklahoma.
Of course.
North America was settled by European nations which were constantly at war with one another. Just look at the wars between the French and English and their respective Indian allies.
It was a common thing for White groups to ally with non-White groups to dominate other White groups.
I’m sorry you feel the need to use the highly pejorative term, cracker. Anyone so described is stripped of his or her diversity and nationality. Interesting background web site on cracker:
http://www.cafepress.com/edchange/327967
Accurate perspective on the Irish of the South. My Irish Catholic great-great grandparents immigrated to and settled in Alabama in the late 1830s. Their son, my great-grandfather, was born in Alabama in the early 1840s and fought with an Alabama regiment in Rodes’ Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia. We’ve always thought of ourselves as Southerners, not Irish.
I’m not using the term in the pejorative sense – everyone around here is a Cracker.
“Tim Wise can talk unself-consciously about how much white people suck” because he is a Jew. As a young man he was deeply shocked when he learned Christians believe all non-Christians go to hell when they die. He came to see himself as an outsider from the White mainstream, and he began to sympathise with other outsiders.
“the Cracker Nation has dreamed of expelling the negroes”, but many leaders of the seccessionist movement in the deep south dreamed of reopening the transatlantic slave trade. In 1776 it was representatives from Charleston, Savanah (and Providence R.I.) who removed Jefferson’s condemnation of the slave trade from the declaration of independance. In 1787, it was representatives from the same towns who inserted an the only (!) un-ammendable provision in the constitution, which prevented congress from outlawing the transatlantic slave trade before 1808. If the deep south hadn’t been politically connected to the rest of the USA, it might very well have ended up like South Africa, or even Haiti.
Hunter, you under-estimate the amount of intermarriage between various White American sub-groups, and you over-estimate the amount of hostility.
Strangely enough, the first time I went south of the Mason-Dixon line, I stopped in a store that was steeped in that modern art that has paintings of Civil War scenes, and books galore on DSouthern subjects. I had only in the past week discovered the term, ‘cracker.’ I only knew it from the box candy, Cracker Jack.
Well, I was looking for a book I had read about that sounded interesting, and I asked the White lady behind the desk, “Do you have a book called ‘Cracker Culture’? The lady didn’t seem to know what it was, but an older, heavyset Black woman in the store’s head turned around, and LOOKED AT ME, as if I had said the ‘n’ word… or had said a word that, for Blacks, is LIKE the ‘n’ word. I knew I was on to something then, if it surprised a Black woman, and didn’t even register with the White sales clerk. I later found the book, and learned what ‘crackers’ were….. but I’ll never forget that moment. It was like looking at “Mammy’s” face in GWTW, all whites bug-eyed, in a sea of chocolate, with the mouth in an ‘O’ of shock. lol
There is an important difference between Midwesterners and New Englanders: New Englanders have rigid social classes. The Midwest does not.
I grew up in the Midwest, in Chicago. My mother’s ancestors arrived in New England on the Mayflower. My dad’s ancestors were frontiersman who arrived in the Midwest as homesteaders and fur traders in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. So I have a good handle on the attitudes of both regions.
Midwestererns exhibit an almost pathological sense of egalitarianism and conformism. I call it the “regular guy” syndrome. The basic mindset is that everyone is as good as everyone else and has the same rights as everyone else. Also, everyone should behave like everyone else. We should all behave in the same way, dress in the same styles, and pursue the same goals. Anyone who tries to rise above their oh-so-average peers, or commits the sin of thinking that they are “better” than the average person, is committing a heinous sin. For this reason, plenty of Midwesterners who earn more than $125,000 per year would not be caught dead with an iPhone, a BMW, or any of the other trappings of upper-middle-class success. Why? If asked, they’ll invariably give the same reply — “because I’m just a regular guy — I don’t need anything too fancy.” These people drive crappy cars, live in modest homes, and limit themselves in every way possible. It’s not because they are prudent, fearful of economic reversal, or uninterested in material things It’s because they are afraid to live their lives in full, terrified that they will be condemned if they dare to enjoy themselves too much. It’s easy to see how people with this mindset can embrace political liberalism and feel right at home with New England Puritans.
But the flipside of this mindest is that there are no social classes in the Midwest. We have blue-collar politicians like Richard J. Daley, not aristocrats like John Kerry or Haley Barbour. In this, Midwesterners are a lot like Southern Crackers. Blue-collar Chicagoans would run John Kerry out of town on a rail if he ever ran for office in Illinois. We Midwesterners simply do not tolerate condescension or putting on airs. Anyone who does those things can go straight to hell. From time to time New England immigrants to the Midwest have tried to establish a class system, but those attempts have always been crushed.
New Englanders, by contrast, have a rigid class system. John Kerry minces around in tasseled loafers and looks down his nose at his own constituents. And the working classes put up with it! They bow and scrape and are intimidated by him! The supposedly “tough” Boston Irish behave just like European peasants when dealing with their “betters” like John Kerry.
To my mind, this is the biggest difference between New England and the Midwest. There is a fundamental difference in outlook, and the societal expression of that difference is exemplified by the fact that New England has a class system, while the Midwest does not.
The other big difference is that ethnicty is much less important in the Midwest than it is out east. In the East you are Irish, Italian, WASP, Jewish, whatever. Your ethnicity is a central fact of your identity, and people judge and make assumptions about you based on your ethnicity. In the Midwest it’s just not a big deal, ethnicity is more like hair color or eye color. A lot of Midwesterners have abandoned all ethnic ties, there are plenty of Italians in Chicago who act just like Scandinavians in Minnesota. In Boston and New York there are fourth and fifth generation “Irish,” whereas in Chicago you can see the recent Eastern European immigrants assimilating into bland Midwestern conformity before your very eyes.
Anyway, that’s why the East and the Midwest strike me as two very different places.
The fanciful idea of reopening the transatlantic slave trade was a 19C version of a “wedge issue” which was designed to polarize the Deep South against Yankeeland – when the Southern states actually seceded, the slave trade was banned in the Confederate Constitution, and that happened before the Upper South joined the Confederacy.
The “Nation of Immigrants” is descriptive of some parts of America where historically there was a lot of immigration and intermarriage – in the “Nine Nations,” it is called “The Foundry”; in “American Nations,” it is called “the Midlands.”
Southerners are overwhelmingly of British ancestry – the “Scots-Irish,” the Welsh, Highland Scots, Southern English, etc. If you look at the U.S. Census, you will find that the “Americans” are synonymous with Southern Whites.
To be sure, there have always been other groups in the South, the Cajuns in Southern Louisiana, but even they remain distinct in the 21st century. Most of the Southerners of non-British ancestry live in the big cities like Atlanta or Raleigh-Durham or Houston or New Orleans or Tampa or Orlando, etc.
I’m really comparing the South to the Midwest here – it is like comparing apples and oranges, outside the big cities White Southerners are very homogeneous, whereas in other areas like the Midwest or the Bosh-Wash corridor you have people who are a lot more mixed than we are.
Yeah, I stumbled upon that one many years ago in the AU library.
Blacks used “cracker” as a derogatory term for White people. “Hoosier” started out as a slang term for “hick” or “hillbilly” or “white trash” – according to Matt Parrott, Indiana is now the “Hoosier Nation.”
Crackers really don’t have a problem though with being called “Crackers” – just look at Jeff Foxworthy who has made a fortune as a comedian, Southerners love self depreciating humor, especially “redneck” jokes.
There is actually a thriving subculture of “redneck pride.” Redneck Pride is like 1000x bigger than “White pride” even though it means the same exact thing. It is all about Cracker Nationalism.
Have you watched Larry the Cable Guy? What about Lizard Lick Towing? There is actually a whole thriving culture of Cracker television shows now.
That Bush political ad of John Kerry windsurfing was devastating:
Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesotta, and Wisconsin wouldn’t have had to worry about miscegenation due to low black population and heavy social stigma. Yankees didn’t race mix.
DNA research proves few planters had sex with their slaves
it did happen, no doubt about it but I doubt it happened often. One reason is, because such a thing would make managing the farms operations would be more diffcult. It would break down good order and discpline. There is a good deal written on the topic at the time, all of it agaisnt it. Free White men would loose their job for it too.
Another key reason is, those men had the money to keep a woman on the side and that was not looked down on. Those kept women would have been White and much better looking then negros
most folks here spout off a lot of anti South shit with out doing their homework. Makes y’all look bad. Find some sources not written by som damnyankee/ liberal and read up on the topic 2-3 hours a week for year. Won’t take long and y’all would benefit from it
My theory is that Yankees didn’t pass anti-miscegenation laws in Minnesota and Wisconsin because they didn’t agree with them.
Far from there being a “stigma” against miscegenation, Massachusetts made a point to repeal the existing anti-miscegenation law on the basis of liberal ideology. Yankees also went far beyond repealing the existing anti-miscegenation laws to banning racial segregation in the areas where they settled.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the bestselling book of the 19C in Yankeeland. In the Amistad case, John Quincy Adams had come out of retirement to defend the negroes who had murdered the Spanish crew. There is a Hollywood movie about that.
Let’s not forget:
(1) Yankees opposed the Louisiana Purchase and considered seceding over it.
(2) Yankees opposed the entrance of Missouri into the Union.
(3) Yankees were strongly opposed to Indian Removal under Andrew Jackson.
(4) Yankees were strongly opposed to the annexation of Texas.
(5) Yankees were nearly violently opposed to the Mexican War.
(6) Yankees were opposed to the Gadsden Purchase.
(7) Yankees denounced the Dred Scott decision which said that blacks were not American citizens … which they repealed with the 14th Amendment.
(8) Yankees founded Oberlin College in Ohio – which remains a center of leftist radicalism in 2011 – the first integrated coeducational university in America.
(8) Yankees passed “personal liberty laws” to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act in the Compromise of 1850 for they could keep runaway negroes in their communities.
Three Southern presidents – Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk – are responsible for acquiring the entire Western United States. This was denounced as “imperialism” in Yankeeland.
Moving forward, Yankees repealed the anti-miscegenation laws of Iowa and Kansas once they became predominant there. Yankees like John Brown went to Kansas to fight for racial equality. John Brown then attempted to launch a slave rebellion in Virginia to liberate the slaves and make them our equals.
William Lloyd Garrison, of course, was violently opposed to the Constitution and the idea of deporting blacks to Liberia, and abolitionist influence in the North is why the anti-slavery movement died in the South after the 1830s and why the Liberia experiment collapsed.
Of course the movement for racial equality in the North among organized fanatics like the Wide Awakes was seen as so dangerous in the South that Dixie seceded from the Union after the John Brown raid which was celebrated by the North’s leading intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
After the War Between the States, the worst fears of Southerners came true: Yankees emancipated blacks, forced racial equality onto America at gunpoint with the 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment, and spent the next thirty years (1866 to 1896) trying to suppress the Klan and the White League and other organizations to force racial equality on the South.
They succeeded in forcing racial equality on the North – that is why every Northern state with the exception of Indiana repealed its anti-miscegenation law by 1877 and banned explicitly segregation under state law.
It was the Yankees who repealed the black codes in states like Ohio and Illinois. That is why blacks flooded in there where they became notorious for consorting with White women like the boxer Jack Johnson which is why the Mann Act was passed.
Where did racial equality come from? It had to come from somewhere. Five minutes of research is sufficient to prove that racial equality came from Yankeeland where it became another Yankee utopian ideology that was forced on the rest of the country in the 1860s and 1870s … and later again in the 1950s and 1960s.
Where does all this talk about “civil rights” come from? The origins of the “civil rights movement” goes back to Reconstruction – to the attempt by Yankees to extend full equality to blacks in the post-war South which was passing black codes.
That is why the Yankees set up the “Freedman’s Bureau” and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, not to mention the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment.
Thousands of Yankee carpetbaggers and school marms came to the South in the 1860s and 1870s to uplift the negro to full equality with the backing of the Union Army. Their descendants came back to the South as “Unitarians” and “Unitarian Universalists” in the 1960s to complete the project with organizations like SNCC.
Yankees marched into Southern state capitols like Jackson, Richmond, and Montgomery at the head of black armies which they used to decapitate Southern governments.
In Yankeeland, Frederick Douglass was a celebrity who married a White woman. He was based out of Massachusetts.
After the triumph of abolitionism, the radical leftists in Yankeeland moved on to the women’s suffrage movement which kicked off in the Burnt Over District in Western New York in the late 1840s.
The planter class was fabulously wealthy and spent most of their time in town while overseers managed their plantations in the countryside – they were partying and entertaining guests in cities like Charleston.
The “planter class” was actually a small minority of slaveowners – technically, those who owned over 20 slaves. Here in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley, where I grew up, there were 47 men who owned over 100 slaves, about 1,300 who owned 20 to 100, while there was 4,100 who owned 1 to 5.
Planters owned about 57 percent of the slaves here. The other 43 percent were owned by White families who typically owned “a nigger family.”
If the “planters fucked their slaves” theory was true, then the mulatto population should be concentrated in the countryside where the plantations were. In reality, the darkest and purest blacks in America live in the majority black counties, whereas the lightest live in the cities.
There is an explanation for this: after the War Between the States, millions of blacks moved to the Northern states, where black women were notorious for engaging prostitution in the big cities.
Speaking of the midwest, their cities are very odd looking.
It’s like someone took a skyscraper and put it in the middle of suburb.
The reason for this is that by the time the midwest cities were important, the car was already gaining traction. And unlike the west coast, they don’t have an earthquake problem. So they built vertically, but it’s not walkable like a northeast city.
The North is not some bastion of race mixing, nor did Northerners ever fight the War to give blacks equality. The North fought to keep the union together as Lincoln explicitly stated. As for Wisconsin and Minnesotta not passing anti-miscegenation laws
How many blacks lived in Wisconsin and Minnesotta at the time? It was a midwesterner President Hayes who ended Reconstruction.
“MossadDid9/11,”
(1) The lawn jockey in my front yard is black as coal … the same is true of all the black caricatures in my Jim Crow memorabilia collection. Not a single one of these “lawn jockeys” are light skinned.
(2) South Carolina was an explicitly racial, caste based society, where no one confused Whites with blacks, with strong segregation and anti-miscegenation laws – from the 1670s until 1967 – with the brief exception of Reconstruction when Yankees abolished slavery and imposed racial integration on South Carolina.
(3) In Coastal South Carolina and Georgia, the blacks are so isolated and unmixed there that they have even preserved aspects of their native language and culture from Africa itself.
(4) New Orleans was founded by the French and Spanish where a Caribbean racial caste system developed which was not based on the one drop rule. The race mixing that went on there was typical of other colonies founded by the Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
(5) There was massive miscegenation in the Northern states between White women and black men in the North’s speakeasies … which is why so much of the admixture into the black population comes from White females. Most of the rest of it comes from black women working as prostitutes in Northern cities.
(6) Of course black men have been marrying White women in the North … from the beginning in New York and New Jersey, Vermont and New Hampshire … and for 180 or so years in Massachusetts … and for almost 150 years in most of the other Northern states.
Frederick Douglass lived there with his White wife publishing “The North Star.”
(7) Every single anti-miscegenation law in the South was struck down by Loving vs. Virginia in 1967. Of course this came after Yankees and the rest of the Northern states voted 9 to 1 to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration Act of 1965 in honor of their glorious hero Saint MLK who they succeeded in getting a federal holiday in the 1980s.
Every single one of these bills was voted down in the South. Just like the IRCA amnesty was voted down in the South and the DREAM Act was voted down last year where every single House representative from New England voted for it.
(8) Yankees fought the bloodiest war in American history to emancipate the slaves and spent the next 30 years of American history struggling to give them civil rights … the last gasp of which was Henry Cabot Lodge’s Force Bill in 1890 which was overwhelmingly supported in Yankeland.
(9) The strongest taboo in Southern culture for hundreds of years was miscegenation between black men and white women … such a thing WAS NOT a taboo in the Northern states where it was practiced for 150 years before the Supreme Court forced miscegenation on the South.
(10) In Mississippi and Georgia, it was a felony to even publish documents supporting racemixing between blacks and whites.
(11) I’m sure her ancestors came to America after Yankees alone passed the Immigration Act of 1965 which was actually voted down in the South. Southern culture has been forced to change because of what happened here in the 1960s.
The Voting Rights Act in particular turned segregationist districts in the House into the districts now occupied by members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Jim Clyburn.
(12) Of course the South ain’t what it used to be.
– What happened to slavery? Oh wait … Yankees came here and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in order to “liberate” the slaves, something they take enormous pride in to this day.
– After doing that, Yankees made blacks American citizens, and put them in control of states like Mississippi and South Carolina for years. Yet another example of their “racial consciousness” and reported “aversion” to negroes.
– Yankees succeeded in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, not to mention the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, to force racial equality on the South which never wanted it, and which finally overthrew that system in 1896 after the Plessy decision.
– Every single piece of federal civil rights legislation in American history has been spearheaded and supported by Yankeeland.
– As late as 1890, Yankees were attempting to pass more civil rights legislation, and if only Yankeeland had voted for it, the Force Bill of 1890 would have become another federal law.
– From the 1890s to the 1960s, every Yankee president with the exception of Herbert Hoover supported “civil rights” for blacks. These “civil rights laws” were common in Yankeeland where they were invented by Yankees.
– The White House was integrated by Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t resegregated until the Wilson administration which segregated other federal agencies.
There are plenty of people who live in South Carolina and other Southern states who are transplants from other parts of the country.
There are now so many transplants in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia that those states voted for Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. The only reason that Obama won those states is become blacks and transplanted Yankees overwhelmingly voted for him.
Obama carried every single Northern state.
Hey, I think I can explain this mystery …
(1) Yankees fought the bloodiest war in American history to “free the slaves.” That’s how slavery came to an end in South Carolina.
(2) After the War Between the States, Yankees passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, not to mention the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, and the 15th Amendment.
Yankees also set up the Freedman’s Bureau. South Carolina and other Southern states were dissolved into military districts under the Union Army which protected black voters. Thousands of Yankees came to South Carolina another other states – why did they come here?
They came here to FORCE negro equality and multiracial democracy on the South. By 1877, they had given up on imposing their worldview on the South, but they succeeded in the North which has been fully integrated ever since 1887
(3) As late as 1890, Yankees were still trying to pass federal civil rights laws. The last such law was Henry Cabot Lodge’s Force Bill which was passed in Yankeeland but defeated in Congress.
(4) From the 1890s until the 1960s, the North passed dozens of civil rights laws at the state level which banned segregation and which banned anti-miscegenation laws and which banned racial discrimination.
Every single single Northern president supported “civil rights” in this period. There was a repeated effort throughout that period to pass an “anti-lynching bill.”
(5) In the aftermath of WW2, the North decided to resume the project of forcing integration on South Carolina and other Southern states, something that violently opposed here.
(6) It was the Supreme Court that integrated the public schools in Brown vs. Board of Education, which dissolved the white primary in Smith v. Allwright, which integrated graduate schools in the Gaines decision, which banned anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia, which upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the Heart of Atlanta Mo tel case, which banned segregation in interstate travel in Boynton v. Virginia.
(7) It was Dwight Eisenhower and the Yankees in the U.S. Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. It was also Eisenhower who used the military to integrate Arkansas.
(8) After the Yankee JFK became president, he used the military to integrate the University of Alabama (1963), the University of Georgia (1961), and the University of Mississippi in (1962).
(9) In 1963, MLK gave his “I Have a Dream Speech” at where else but the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of thousands of blacks and Yankees.
(10) Yankees invaded the South on the Freedom Riders and came en masse to the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
Several of these Yankees became Civil Rights Martyrs – James Reeb, Violia Liuzzo, and Jonathan Daniels.
(11) After JFK was assassinated, his Vice President LBJ pushed through the JFK agenda on immigration and civil rights, in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration Act of 1965.
Both of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed on sectional lines after the North voted for both bills by a 9 to 1 margin to overcome the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate.
(12) After MLK was assassinated, the same coalition of Northern liberals passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Later, they glorified MLK by passing the MLK federal holiday in the 1980s.
(13) The South voted against the Immigration Act of 1990. We also voted against the DREAM Act and it was Southerners in Congress that killed the Bush amnesty.
How do we explain the state of the South today in the year 2011? Very simple. The society that we live in today was one that was imposed on this part of the country against its will in the 1860s and 1870s and later in the 1950s and the 1960s.
The degenerate culture that is pumped into the South today through the television comes from Los Angeles and New York City which are the media capitals of America.
So yeah, there are millions of immigrants pouring in here, there are blacks that live like kings on the welfare state, miscegenation has become more common, and our entire society has been integrated … which only means that the North has used the federal government to impose its own way of life on the South.
Now, ain’t that a bitch? It turns out the “Jews weren’t behind it after all.”
as I understand the DNA stuff most mulatto’s come from Spanish and French backgrounds with a large number being refugees from haiti. I also understand that negros in the US have the lowest % of White DNA compared to other powers of the day
My understanding of DNA research is limitited….. As always folks should do there own research. But if I understand the DNA research correctly, I crushes the idea there was a lot of race mixing going on. Way to much of it now and that’s for damn sure. I know to many familes that have ripped apart due to it. But at least the familes I know disowne their daughters
It’s my guess the planter class did a lot more work then folks think. I know what it takes to manage some small business. Can’t imagine how hard it would be to run a large one and that’s what the larger plantations
Mossad,
(1) I’ve collected that type of memorabilia for years … every single example that comes to mind from lawn jockeys to lawn ornaments to tin signs to wooden signs depicts blacks at pitch black.
I grew up in such an area so I know why they are depicted as pitch black. The blackest, purest negroes in America are the ones that live in the plantation counties. As it happens, the blackest and purest of all negroes in America are the Gullah people in the Georgia and South Carolina lowlands that grew rice and indigo.
They are so unmixed there precisely because they had such a high mortality rate that kept wave after wave of negroes coming there from Western Africa. They still retain elements of their own culture and language to this day.
The overwhelming majority of the race mixing between blacks and Whites went on in the cities – in the South, it went on in New Orleans, where it was going on before Louisiana became part of the United States.
New Orleans was founded by the French and was also under Spanish rule and the racemixing there reflexs that. The French miscegenated all across their colonies in Canada where the “metis” were created.
(2) It was the Jim Crow laws (and the integration and industries of the North) that drove blacks out of the South from 1896 until 1965.
(3) Slavery existed for a reason … slavery made the South fabulously wealthy. Once upon a time, Mississippi and Alabama used to be two of the richest states in America. The Deep South was far wealthier than Yankeeland.
(4) As hard as it is to believe, the predominantly black counties in Alabama and Mississippi used to be among the richest areas in America … that was before Yankees implemented abolitionism here and created their glorified “free labor” society, which was a catastrophic failure.
(5) We picked our own cotton after the whole area was destroyed after the War Between the States and everyone lost their land during Reconstruction and became sharecroppers.
(6) The Yankees are responsible for the present condition of the South – the proof is states like West Virginia and Kentucky which were exporting their slaves, which is why those states are two of the whitest states in America, a natural process that would have continued if the North hadn’t been swept by an insane religious mania in the 1830s.
(7) I’ve never ever seen a movie that glorified slavery except Gone With The Wind. Have you ever seen Roots?
(8) There is no “Cavalier” class in the South … maybe you haven’t noticed, but blacks now rule all the Black Belt counties where the “Cavalier” class was located. In South Carolina, Jim Clyburn owes his congressional seat to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
(9) The Voting Rights Act of 1965 destroyed the most pro-segregation counties in the South. Correspondingly, it was the “business progressives” in cities like Atlanta and Birmingham that become the new elite, the Chamber of Commerce types that control the Republican Party.
(10) It is the context of the Union that is behind every single bit of that – Republicans have to win a certain percentage of the black and Hispanic vote to form an electoral majority that can capture the White House in the electoral college. That is why they play down “racism.”
(11) The Voting Rights Act of 1965 completely transformed Southern politics by enfranchising millions of blacks who couldn’t vote before. That is why we have the kind of White politicians here that we do today.
You blame northerners for race mixing. Where do you think mulattos came from? The South. Where did Sally Hemmings and Booker T come from? Mulattos were common in the South, not the North. Except for a few abolitionist radicals, the North hardly racemixed. All those Northern states you listed are still very white. You don’t walk around seeing interacial couples everywhere.
ok, lets not fret about sexual relations with negros, it can be solved quite easily, sterilization and a ban on HARD alcohol (presumabaly the only reason negresses get to race mix).
OK, OK, I get it. History is a fascinating subject, but what do we do TODAY?
I’ve recently had my own ‘Gates-gate’ moment. As a Yankee living in Minnesota (one ‘t,’ by the way) I’ve now been made cognizant that even being supposedly [sic] ‘intelligent’ black men, does not change the Ethiope’s skin, or remove the savagery of the jackal/leopard from their souls [Jer. 13:23]. I now understand that blacks are: a) utterly envious of whites for BEING white, 24/7. They are also b) contemptuous of all whites for being in their way- whatever the case/issue/perceived grievance. They are perennially c) disingenuous to the point of being ‘lying SOB’s’ when it suits them (again 24/7), and most importantly, d) Blacks – even PhD Blacks, are willing to USE THE SYSTEM at any and every opportunity, SOLELY for their own personal/racial advantage, and that without any intrinsic merit behind it all. In other words, it’s a sham. Everything we have WASTED over the last 100 years, has been for naught.
I now righteously HATE blacks with a fierceness I could not have believed possible. I consider them to be the ‘enemies of God’ that St. Theodosius mentioned. I am now aware that I have become one of those, mentioned in the Kipling poem ‘When the Saxon began to hate,’ who despised the ‘darkies’ -whether in India, or sub-saharan Africa. I now SEE THROUGH EVERY SINGLE ONE of their B.S. tactics, and realize that Obama/Sharpton/Jackson/Gates are not just isolated instances- ALL blacks are just like them: narcissistic, ego-driven, grievance-directed, ‘jive-talking’ to obfuscate, intimidate, and exterminate the White Man. The Obamanation and the other aforementioned ‘role models’ are also clannish (cf. Gates- gate) and duplicitous in the extreme, from highest to lowest. Finally, with Barack and Henry Louis Gates, I lastly see that Education is an UTTER WASTE with them. Even advanced degrees don’t change their SOULS- if they have them. And without that ‘pnevma’ animating their ill-gained ‘smarts’ (for it is not intelligence, but mere satanic cunning), it is the most grievous sin we White Americans have ever comitted.
The entire race of Blacks DESERVE TO REMAIN illiterate and stupid, and the smartest of them should NEVER be given place, degree, or entrance into our institutions, our heritage, our culture, from which to rise up from their predestinted state of ignorance; for “You can take the #$%^&* out of the Jungle, but you can never take the jungle out of the, etc.”
I am dedicated in my deepest fiber to eradicate their presence- every last single one of them from this nation, via repatriation, disenfranchisement, overturn of the 14th, 15th, etc. Amendments, and/or ‘by any means necessary.’ If they wanna play ball, they have to abide by OUR Laws, or all bets are off. I now can ‘hate them with a perfect hatred.’ [Ps. 139:22] How do we proceed toward that ‘final solution,’ gentlemen?
THAT is the pressing question of the age.
What to do about things in th hear and now? Now is the time to marshal our resources and strength. White folks are getting pissed, we’re figuring out we’ve been lied too, the
economy is dying and will stay dead. Be ready for all those factors collide
Live rightouesly. Have a large White family, make as much money as you can to save up for the bad time. Live debt free, buy silver & food. You, your friends and family should learn to live on your own. You and them should be your own team. Buy firearms and learn how to use them. Secure your home and family and figure out who has what skills and who should learn new skills. and recruit more White folk. RECRUIT more White folk so you and them will be ready when the bad times hit. Let us, the racially aware White folks be the man with the plan when our family, friends and home towns need leadership
” How do we proceed toward that ‘final solution,’ gentlemen?
THAT is the pressing question of the age.”
Why, that’s extremely easy! Create a color-blind society where all men are born equal, as in judged equally by the law. They’ll take care of themselves.
My racial awareness was not taught to me by bigot parents, they are actually semi-DWL themselves. It was the dissonance of BRAs propaganda that “we’re all equal ‘n’ shit” among self-evident double standards. I now see what you “cracker biggots” and DWLs both see: Blacks are not like us.
Jim Crow 2.0 or a mass forced-migration would be great but will never be politically palatable after a half-century of forced “diversity is our strength!” BS. A more prudent political approach would be to frame it as MLKs dream of “judging not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”
Not only would, I believe, more Americans be open to a system like that but the continuing economic collapse in the west will likely force such an issue. There’s no more money to coddle and ignore black problems but there won’t be any to round ’em all up and send them to live in their own nation either. Such a “freedom and equality” political agenda would likely see cultural or ethnic self organization into the 11 different ethno-states anyway. People want to live with their own kind and would naturally gravitate toward this type of solution if it not for political meddling.
My ideal end-game would be the US broken up into its different ethno states where all the races and cultures could live with themselves but come together to trade freely. Personally, I wouldn’t give a crap about blacks and mexicans if they weren’t being forced down my throat.
Mossad,
There is no “Cavalier” class in the South anymore – slavery, the basis of their wealth, was destroyed 150 years ago in the War Between the States, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned all the segregationist strongholds in the Black Belt counties into black majority counties which are represented by Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus.
The South was transformed by the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
I know less about South Carolina, but I know a great deal about Southern politics since 1965 in Georgia and Alabama – the demise of the Black Belt segregationists led directly to the triumph of the “business progressives” and their White suburban constituency in cities like Montgomery, Birmingham, and Atlanta.
The “business progressives” are the Chamber of Commerce types who turned Atlanta into “The City Too Busy To Hate.” These people have always tried to repress “racism” in the South to attract Northern industry. They are the ones who sold out the White working class in Birmingham and Montgomery.
In Birmingham, the business progressives hated Bull Conner, and were pleased with his demise; they had been trying to undermine him for years before the “Freedom Riders” came here. It is the “business progressives” who have transformed the South into the Sunbelt which has attracted countless waves of Northerners to states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
Isn’t this obvious?
The Sunbelt South and the areas of the “New South” that were created after 1865 look nothing like the Old South. Have you driven through Greenville and Spartanburg on I-85? How could you ever get the impression that the Sunbelt was created by the old fogies in Charleston?
Does Greenville look anything like Charleston?
The wealth of the “Cavalier” class was based upon slavery and agriculture in the Antebellum era and to what extent it survived in the Jim Crow era it was still based on agriculture.
The Sunbelt economy is based upon manufacturing, commerce, defense spending, and suburban sprawl. The political elite in the South today is most definitely not the Cavalier elite or the planter class that had power years ago – it is a mercantile elite like its counterpart in the North, which is why the South resembles the North, whereas that was not the case a mere 50 years ago.
This is so obvious that it is incredible we are talking about it … the South has been remade in the image of the North, especially in the image of the Midwest, which is why there are these endless cookie cutter suburban developments here and these endless commercial strips and everyone now kowtows to what the corporate owned newspapers are saying.
Within the South, you can can walk through countless cities and clearly see areas that were created by an entirely different civilization, especially in the Old South.
If you are anywhere close to Charleston, you can see what Old Charleston looks like and contrast it with Sunbelt South Carolina.
Fr. John,
In an ideal world, we would put aside our ethnic, cultural, and ideological differences to overthrow the existing system and create a race based nation where Whites are restored to their former place of honor in America.
Unfortunately, the reality of the matter is that “White America” has always been more of an ideal than something that really exists. The absurdity of talking about a “White Canada” or a “White Europe” is forgotten when we talk about “White America.”
White Nationalists assume that there White people in North America are a homogeneous unit and that there are no cultural differences between them. Every time we turn on the television or have an election this is refuted by reality.
In the 1920s, the Second Klan tried to create a “White America” across sectional lines on the basis of American nationalism and Protestantism. Even then, it was an idealistic crusade that was rejected by millions of Whites for any number of reasons, and it eventually succumbed to the divisive forces which brought it down.
Can the White Nationalist movement succeed? Again, I point to the demise of the Second Klan, a movement which was mainstream and far stronger than anything resembling the present White Nationalist movement.
There is no such thing as “White America.” Instead, there is a struggle to forge a “White America” among White Nationalists, who are small minority of the White population, who are driven by idealism and racial grievances.
Hunter,
White people indeed are not a nation, as you correctly point out periodically. However, we ARE a distinct species, however varied and given to internecine hostility. And like it or not, we are going to have to accept that our racial enemies don’t see us as Yankees or Dixie or whatever–just as Whites. Enemies. Prey. Spoils. Either we accept that necessity dictates some measure of unity, or we perish. Horrifically.
Utterly off-topic,
But Hunter, did you see this guy’s epic rant?
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/cris-sheridan/2011/10/07/do-you-agree-or-disagree-with-this-wall-street-protester
I love the part about “STOP with these wars. We have our own problems. We don’t need to BE in the middle east.”
“Bring production back to America.”
And
“How about we pay fed gov’t tax only to police our borders? That’s the only thing the Fed gov’t should be here for — to keep our borders safe.”
I think that this guy would recognize Charles Lindbergh as a hero.
Chris,
When I hear the term “White America,” the first thing that comes to mind is the term “Native American,” which is taken for granted in the mainstream.
But, in reality, there was no such thing as “Native Americans” throughout most of our history. There were just various idealistic attempts to unite Indians on the basis of race (see Tecumseh and the Red Sticks) to resist the White man.
Tecumseh was well meaning and he had a reasonable plan to stop the White settlers on the frontier – unite all Indians into a single force and declare war on the White man and forge alliances with European powers.
Idealism always clashes with reality though.
Chris,
I consider you my ally man. We are on a first name basis here! Its okay, LOL.
If there is going to be a “White ethnostate,” then logically it has to exist somewhere, and it has to be based on an ethnicity, which has to exist somewhere, which can be mobilized as a geographically discreet unit to separate from the United States – otherwise, we are just sitting around here blowing smoke up the ass of people like Greg Johnson.
What is the alternative to Dixie? The whole idea of a “White Republic” is just an abstract way of talking about Dixie in the first place.
The South is the only region of the United States that has ever thought of itself as a “White Republic” or a “White Man’s Country.” The only reason we even talk about this stuff is because of the influence of Southern culture where the damn idea came from.
“And the Christian radio down here sounds like it’s broadcast daily from Tel Aviv. Sweet Baby Jesus the South ain’t what it used to be.”
You are right about that! Several years ago, I was driving in the middle of nowhere and saw this ramshackle Baptist church that had a sign stating that a rabbi would be addressing the congregation the following Sunday. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The closest synagogues that I can think of would have to be over 100 miles away in either Jacksonville or Savannah. What would a rabbi have to say to these people? I know I have never seen a message in front of the synagogue in Savannah welcoming a Baptist preacher to speak.
I also remember reading in the local paper of a small town about an hour away from Savannah, right about the time of the Iraq and Afghan invasions, about a group of Israeli politicians visiting the local churches along with some national politicians. That blew my mind! I can’t imagine that town sees many state-level politicians, let alone foreign delegations. I guess they were just drumming up support in the boonies.
The funny thing is that I once knew an old Jewish lady in Atlanta who said that she and her husband were refused a hotel room in the same town in the 50s. Times have changed. Now every other person believes that his boss is a Jewish carpenter!
“The Sunbelt economy is based upon manufacturing, commerce, defense spending, and suburban sprawl. The political elite in the South today is most definitely not the Cavalier elite or the planter class that had power years ago – it is a mercantile elite like its counterpart in the North, which is why the South resembles the North, whereas that was not the case a mere 50 years ago.”
An interesting book on this subject is “Northernizing the South” by Richard N. Current. Jefferson’s talk of a rural utopia didn’t define the region, and it was only a matter of time before the South industrialized in order to take advantage of its own resources. The South had to have some industrial capacity in order to fight at all. I can think of several mill ruins around the Atlanta area that are relics of the Civil War.
As far as mixing goes, I live on the Georgia coast, and the Geechees here are different that the blacks I grew up around in Atlanta. Maybe they retain more of their African roots. There are fewer yellows down here, but most of the mixes in Atlanta claim to be part Cherokee, so I don’t know how common black/white mixing really is/was.
I’m not sure I agree that the majority of Northerners wanted a racially egalitarian utopia for themselves. They seemed to be quite involved with white supremacy themselves, and were heavily into eugenics for most of the 20th century. The caste system in the North would definitely put me low on the ladder, so I doubt that blacks would fare much better regardless of what is said officially.
Thanks for the comments, Mr. Wallace. A LOT of my long-held beliefs are crashing around my ears this day. Yours not the least of them.
If there has never been a ‘White America’ as a nation, but only these ‘ethnostates’ held together by the glue of propaganda, then we can do no more than wait for the utter end- the dissolution of this land I once considered home- and hope that by being in a small town, provisioned with ‘guns, gold, and seed’ my children might one day find a place their race can call, ‘home.’ But for me, I am as devastated as the Psalmist in Ps. 137
<>
King James Version
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Hunter, you wrote:
There was massive miscegenation in the Northern states between White women and black men in the North’s speakeasies … which is why so much of the admixture into the black population comes from White females. Most of the rest of it comes from black women working as prostitutes in Northern cities.
Do you have any statistics or history to back this up? It sounds like total BS to me, sorry. On the other hand the poster above pointed out the prevelence of things like “quadroons” “mulattos” and “octaroons” in the South. These terms were not known because the admixtures were vanishingly rare.
Growing up in Detroit, a city with a huge black population, even before the great white exodus (white flight as it was called at the time) following the 1967 riots I can assure you that mixed race couples were extremely rare. They were frowned upon by BOTH races. (Many older blacks hate race mixing as much as the average OD reader, and were quite willing to talk about it.)
I’m sure there were black hos and white tricks back then, but this didn’t produce a baby boom of little mulattos. Hookers don’t get impregnated by their tricks as a matter of basic business sense.
Here’s a web site with stats on mixed race varoius states, it’s interesting: (note, from looking at this includes other mixed race combinations. One suspects that the mixed race individuals in Umatilla, OR are almost all white/American Indian, for instance given that there is a large reservation there.)
http://www.idcide.com/lists/sc/on-population-mixed-race-percentage.htm
For South Carolina: There are some small towns (pop < 500) that are 16% and 17% mixed. The slighlty larger cities top out around 7%: Berea, Greer, Woodfield. The major metropolis's run between: Columbia is 3% and Hilton Head 6%.
Mass. is much higher: major cities run from Quincy at 3% to Springfield at 21%. If accurate that's pretty amazing.
Michigan’s oldest European settlement was by the French. The Wikipedia entry on Detroit gives a flavor of this:
History of Detroit
The city name comes from the Detroit River (French: le détroit du Lac Érié), meaning the strait of Lake Erie, linking Lake Huron and Lake Erie; in the historical context, the strait included Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.[17] Traveling up the Detroit River on the ship Le Griffon (owned by Cavelier de La Salle), Father Louis Hennepin noted the north bank of the river as an ideal location for a settlement.
There, in 1701, the French officer Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, along with fifty-one additional French-Canadians, founded a settlement called Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, naming it after the comte de Pontchartrain, Minister of Marine under Louis XIV. France offered free land to attract families to Detroit, which grew to 800 people in 1765, the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans.[18]
Ste. Anne de Détroit, founded in 1701 is the second oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the U.S.A. The present church was completed in 1887.[19]François Marie Picoté, sieur de Belestre (Montreal 1719–1793) was the last French military commander at Fort Detroit (1758–1760), surrendering the fort on November 29, 1760 to the British. The region’s fur trade was an important economic activity. Detroit’s city flag reflects this French heritage. (See Flag of Detroit, Michigan).[19]
During the French and Indian War (1760), British troops gained control and shortened the name to Detroit. Several tribes led by Chief Pontiac, an Ottawa leader, launched Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763), including a siege of Fort Detroit. Partially in response to this, the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 included restrictions on white settlement in unceded Indian territories. Detroit passed to the United States under the Jay Treaty (1796). In 1805, fire destroyed most of the settlement. A river warehouse and brick chimneys of the wooden homes were the sole structures to survive.[20]
From 1805 to 1847, Detroit was the capital of Michigan. As the city expanded, the street layout plan developed by Augustus B. Woodward, Chief Justice of the Michigan Territory was followed. Detroit fell to British troops during the War of 1812 in the Siege of Detroit, was recaptured by the United States in 1813 and incorporated as a city in 1815.[19]
Prior to the American Civil War, the city’s access to the Canadian border made it a key stop along the underground railroad.[19] Then a Lieutenant, the future president Ulysses S. Grant was stationed in the city. His dwelling is still at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. Because of this local sentiment, many Detroiters volunteered to fight during the American Civil War, including the 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment (part of the legendary Iron Brigade) which fought with distinction and suffered 82% casualties at Gettysburg in 1863. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying “Thank God for Michigan!” Following the death of President Abraham Lincoln, George Armstrong Custer delivered a eulogy to the thousands gathered near Campus Martius Park. Custer led the Michigan Brigade during the American Civil War and called them the Wolverines.[21]
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of the city’s Gilded Age mansions and buildings arose. Detroit was referred to as the Paris of the West for its architecture, and for Washington Boulevard, recently electrified by Thomas Edison.[19] Strategically located along the Great Lakes waterway, Detroit emerged as a transportation hub. The city had grown steadily from the 1830s with the rise of shipping, shipbuilding, and manufacturing industries. In 1896, a thriving carriage trade prompted Henry Ford to build his first automobile in a rented workshop on Mack Avenue.
Ford Piquette Avenue Plant (1904), a National Historic Landmark.In 1903 Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. Ford’s manufacturing—and those of automotive pioneers William C. Durant, the Dodge brothers, Packard, and Walter Chrysler—reinforced Detroit’s status as the world’s automotive capital; it also served to encourage truck manufacturers such as Rapid and Grabowsky.[19]
With the introduction of Prohibition, smugglers used the river as a major conduit for Canadian spirits, organized in large part by the notorious Purple Gang.[22] Strained racial relations were evident in the 1920s trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black Detroit physician acquitted of murder. A man died when shots were fired from Ossian’s house into a threatening mob who gathered to try to force him out of a predominantly white neighborhood.[23]
Chauncey Hurlbut Memorial Gate (1894) – restored in 2007. East Jefferson at Cadillac Blvd.With the factories came high-profile labor unions in the 1930s such as the United Auto Workers which initiated disputes with manufacturers. The labor activism during those years increased influence of union leaders in the city such as Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters and Walter Reuther of the autoworkers. The 1940s saw the construction of the world’s first urban freeway system below ground level, the Davison[24] and the industrial growth during World War II that led to Detroit’s nickname as the Arsenal of Democracy.[25]
Industry spurred growth during the first half of the 20th century as the city drew tens of thousands of new residents, particularly workers from the Southern United States, to become the United States’ fourth largest. At the same time, tens of thousands of European immigrants located in the city. Social tensions rose with the rapid pace of growth. The color blind promotion policies of the auto plants resulted in racial tension that erupted into a full-scale riot in 1943.[26]
Consolidation during the 1950s, especially in the automobile sector, streamlined the supply chain. An extensive freeway system constructed in the 1950s and 1960s had facilitated commuting. The Twelfth Street riot in 1967, as well as court-ordered busing accelerated white flight from the city. Commensurate with the shift of population and jobs to its suburbs, the city’s tax base eroded. In the years following, Detroit’s population fell from a peak of roughly 1.8 million in 1950 to less than half that number today.[19]
@Jackson
Great posts, man. What part of the city did you grow up in? I grew up right off Outer Drive and Greiner, surrounded by Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery. Within pissing distance of the Municipal Airport.
My folks were early refugees to the suburbs. My first house at birth was in a brand new subdivision in Farmington. I later lived in Birmingham and Franklin – all Northwest suburbs in Oakland County. My grandparents on both sides lived in the city. Dad’s folks had a beautiful three floor house right on a park neat the Detroit Golf Club. Mom’s family home was a little more modest but still a lovely home on a beautiful tree lined street. Neither were in the core part of the city, but both sets had to leave by the end of the 1970s.
You can’t tell people born in Detroit much about dysfunctional blacks and the problems with the dream of integration that they don’t already know. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Jackson,
I came across that many years ago in a book written by a gay historian about Northern speakeasies. I’ve seen it now in several different sources. Most of which I read while I was in college.
Kevin Mumford maybe?
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR2/mumford.html
Still, with titles such as “Boy in the Boat,” the songs left little to the imagination. But, of course, that was the point: like speakeasy dances, African American songs helped to create the performance and experience of same-gender sexual relations. So central was the institutional culture of the speakeasy to the “practices” of homosexuality that it shaped white homosexual life outside of the clubs. For example, in the 1930s, Earl Bruce, a University of Chicago graduate student, studied the patterns of behavior among white homosexual men at a private party, at which the men attempted to recreate the speakeasy scene. According to Bruce, “When we arrived at the apartment, one of the homosexuals sent out for a gallon of beer and a few pints of whiskey.” The ages of the members ranged from twenty-six to thirty-seven. According to Bruce “the owner of the apartment, a homosexual about 25 years of age, runs a small dancing school downtown. Many of his pupils are homosexual.” At the party a “Mr J. [the host] played a number of pornographic records sung by some Negro entertainers; a homosexual theme ran through the lyrics.” These homosexual men could be found “swaying to the music of a colored jazz orchestra,” providing the “unconventional sight” of “two young men in street clothes dancing together, cheek to cheek.” 42 During interviews, white homosexual men revealed not only that they liked to dance, but also that they “like music, singers, especially negro singers.” 43 Mabel Hampton also noted the significance of private parties, particularly because the gatherings were interracial. Of course, in the background of the typical gathering one could hear “jazz”–a word that not only denoted black music, but also, in the parlance of some African Americans, prostitutes, and homosexuals, jazz meant sexual intercourse. 44
This is a reference to New Orleans which was absorbed into the United States. New Orleans was controlled by the French and Spanish and a Caribbean-style racial caste system developed there like its counterparts in Brazil and Mexico.
The Anglos who swept over Louisiana found it repugnant. The Southern racial caste system – with the exception of New Orleans, a French enclave – was based on the “one drop rule.” The South had a comprehensive system of anti-miscegenation laws.
There wasn’t a racial caste system in the North: a handful of Northern states had segregation and anti-miscegenation laws before the War Between the States, namely Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, but that was due to the Appalachian population which had settled the Southern Midwest.
Minnesota and Wisconsin never had anti-miscegenation laws. Iowa repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1851. Kansas – I believe – repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1859.
Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York never had anti-miscegenation laws. Pennsylvania repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1780 due to Quaker influence. Massachusetts repealed its anti-miscegenation law in the 1830s (and, strangely enough) again in the 1840s.
I believe Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut were the last Northern states to keep their anti-miscegenation laws. They repealed their laws around the 1870s or 1880s – check the Wikipedia entry for the precise date.
By the 1960s, half the blacks in America were living in the North, where anti-miscegenation laws hadn’t existed since the 1870s and 1880s, and in many states never existed at all.
In the North’s speakeasies, there was jazz music and black prostitutes and homosexuals and flappers – that whole bohemian lifestyle that became known as the “counter-culture” got its start in Greenwich Village in NYC in the 1920s before it spread to the Left Coast.
In the imagination of WNs, there was a “White America” that was destroyed by “the Jews” in the 1960s – in reality, there were three different Americas, each with its own racial caste system – Dixie, the West, and the North.
The West had segregation and anti-miscegenation laws (with the exception of Washington State, Kansas, and New Mexico) until the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
Here’s something interesting and related to the American Nations and our the backgrounds of the various regions. In features a lot of the figures that have been discussed recently. Again, from Wikipedia:
Jay Treaty
The Jay Treaty, negotiated in 1794 and ratified 1795; in effect 1795-1805.The Jay Treaty, 8 Stat. 116, also known as Jay’s Treaty, The British Treaty, and the Treaty of London of 1794,[1] was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain that is credited with averting war,[2] resolving some issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution,[3] and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which had begun in 1792.
The terms of Jay’s Treaty were designed primarily by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, strongly supported by the chief negotiator John Jay; and support from President George Washington. Jay’s Treaty gained the primary American goals, which included the withdrawal of units of the British Army from pre-Revolutionary forts that it had failed to relinquish in the Northwest Territory of the United States (US) (the area west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio River). (The British had recognized this area as US territory in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.) The parties agree that disputes over wartime debts and the American-Canadian boundary were to be sent to arbitration—one of the first major uses of arbitration in diplomatic history. The Americans were granted limited rights to trade with British possessions in India and colonies in the Caribbean in exchange for some limits on the American export of cotton.
The Jay Treaty was hotly contested by the Jeffersonians in each state. They feared that closer economic ties with Britain would strengthen Hamilton’s Federalist Party, promote aristocracy and undercut republicanism. Washington’s announced support proved decisive and the treaty was ratified by a 2/3 majority of the Senate in November 1794. It was officially ratified by both countries and proclaimed to be in effect on February 29, 1796. Jay’s Treaty became a central issue of contention—leading to the formation of the “First Party System” in the United States, with the Federalists favoring Britain and the Jeffersonian republicans favoring France. The treaty was for ten years’ duration. Efforts to agree on a replacement treaty failed (in 1806) when Jefferson rejected the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty as tensions escalated toward the War of 1812.[4] Formally titled the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, it was signed on November 19, 1794, the Senate advised and consented on June 24, 1795, ratified by the President, and ratifications were exchanged February 29, 1796.
The historian George Herring notes the “remarkable and fortuitous economic and diplomatic gains” produced by the Jay Treaty.[5]
Issues
From the British perspective, its war with France necessitated improving relations with the United States to prevent the U.S. from falling into the French orbit. From the American viewpoint, the most pressing foreign policy issues were normalizing the trade relations with Britain, the US’ leading trading partner, and resolving issues left over from the Treaty of Paris of 1783. As one observer explained, the British government was “well disposed to America… They have made their arrangements upon a plan that comprehends the neutrality of the United States, and are anxious that it should be preserved.”
In 1793–94, the British Navy had captured hundreds of neutral American merchant ships, and British officials in Canada were supporting Indian tribes fighting American settlers in the Ohio River Valley, territory which Britain had explicitly ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. Congress voted for a trade embargo against Britain for two months. Hamilton and the Federalists favored Britain over France, and they sought to normalize relations with Britain. Hamilton designed the plan for a treaty and President George Washington sent Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay to London to negotiate a comprehensive treaty.
The American government had a number of outstanding issues:
The British were still occupying forts on U.S. territory in the Great Lakes region (the Northwest Territory).
The British were continually impressing American sailors into British service
American merchants wanted compensation for 250 merchant ships which the British had confiscated from 1793 through 1794.
Southerners in the United States wanted monetary compensation for the slaves whom the British Army had evacuated with them during the Revolutionary War.
Merchants in both America and in the Caribbean wanted the British West Indies to be reopened to American trade.
The boundary with Canada was vague in many places, and needed to be delineated clearly.
The British were believed to be aggravating Native American attacks on settlers in the Northwest.
Treaty terms
Both sides achieved many objectives. The British agreed to vacate the six western forts by June 1796 (which was done), and to compensate American ship owners (the British paid $10,345,200 by 1802).[7] In return, the United States gave most favored nation trading status to Britain, and acquiesced in British anti-French maritime policies. The United States guaranteed the payment of private prewar debts owed by Americans to British merchants that could not be collected in U.S. courts (the U.S. paid £600,000 in 1802).
Two joint boundary commissions were set up to establish the boundary line in the Northeast (it agreed on the Saint Croix River) and in the Northwest (this one never met and the boundary was settled after the War of 1812).[8]
Jay, a strong opponent of slavery, dropped the issue of compensation for slaves, which angered Southern slaveholders. Jay was unsuccessful in negotiating an end to the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy, which later became a key issue leading to the War of 1812.
Native American rights
Article III states “It is agreed, that it shall at all times be free to His Majesty’s subjects, and to the citizens of the United States, and also to the Indians dwelling on either side of the said boundary line, freely to pass and repass, by land or inland navigation into the respective territories and countries of the two parties on the continent of America, (the country within the limits of the Hudson Bay company only excepted) … and freely carry on trade and commerce with each other.” Article III of the Jay Treaty declared the right of “Indians” (“Native Americans”) as well as of American citizens and Canadian subjects to trade and travel between the United States and Canada, which was then a territory of Great Britain.[9] Over the years since, the United States has codified this obligation in the provisions of Section 289 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and as amended in 1965. As a result of the Jay Treaty, “Native Indians born in Canada are therefore entitled to enter the United States for the purpose of employment, study, retirement, investing, and/or immigration”.[10] Article III of the Jay Treaty is the cause of most Indian claims.[11]
[edit] Approval and dissentWashington submitted the treaty to the United States Senate for its consent in June 1795; a two-thirds vote was needed. The treaty was unpopular at first, and gave the Jeffersonians a platform to rally new supporters. As the historian Paul Varg explains,
“The Jay Treaty was a reasonable give-and-take compromise of the issues between the two countries. What rendered it so assailable was not the compromise spelled out between the two nations but the fact that it was not a compromise between the two political parties at home. Embodying the views of the Federalists, the treaty repudiated the foreign policy of the opposing party.”[12]
The Jeffersonians were opposed to Britain, preferring support for France in the wars raging in Europe, and they argued that the treaty with France from 1778 was still in effect. They considered Britain as the center of aristocracy and the chief threat to the United States’ republican values. They denounced Hamilton and Jay (and even Washington) as monarchists who betrayed American values. They organized public protests against Jay and his treaty; one of their rallying cries said: Damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay! Damn every one that won’t put lights in his window and sit up all night damning John Jay![13]
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison strongly opposed the Treaty as they favored France; foreign policy became a major dispute between the new Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties; it became a core issue of the First Party System. Jefferson and his supporters had a counterproposal to establish “a direct system of commercial hostility with Great Britain,” even at the risk of war. The Jeffersonians raised public opinion to fever pitch by accusing the British of promoting Indian atrocities on the frontier.[14] The fierce debates over the Treaty in 1794–95, according to one historian, “transformed the Republican movement into a Republican party.” To fight the treaty, the Jeffersonians “established coordination in activity between leaders at the capital, and leaders, actives and popular followings in the states, counties and towns.”[15] Jay’s failure to obtain compensation for “lost” slaves galvanized the South into opposition.[16]
The Federalists fought back and Congress rejected the Jefferson-Madison counter-proposals. Washington threw his great prestige behind the treaty, and Federalists rallied public opinion more effectively than did their opponents.[17] Hamilton convinced President Washington it was the best treaty that could be expected. Washington, who insisted the U.S. must remain neutral in the European wars, signed it, and his prestige carried the day in Congress. The Federalists made a strong, systematic appeal to public opinion, which rallied their own supporters and shifted the debate. Washington and Hamilton outmaneuvered Madison, who was opposition leader.[18] By then out of the government, Hamilton was the dominant figure who helped secure the treaty’s approval by the needed 2/3 vote in the Senate.
The Senate passed a resolution in June, advising the president to amend the treaty by suspending the 12th article, which concerned trade between the U.S. and the West Indies. In mid-August, the Senate ratified the treaty 20-10, with the condition that the treaty contain specific language regarding the June 24 resolution. President Washington signed it in late August. The Treaty was proclaimed in effect on February 29, 1796 and in a series of close votes, after another bitter fight the House funded the Treaty in April 1796.[19]
James Madison, then a member of the House of Representatives, argued that the treaty could not, under Constitutional law, take effect without approval of the House, since it regulated commerce and exercised legislative powers granted to Congress. The debate which followed was an early example of originalism, in which Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” lost.[20] After defeat on the treaty in Congress, the Jeffersonian Republicans lost the 1796 presidential election on the issue.
When Jefferson became president in 1801, he did not repudiate the treaty. He kept the Federalist minister, Rufus King, in London to negotiate a successful resolution to outstanding issues regarding cash payments and boundaries. The amity broke down in 1805, as relations turned increasingly hostile as a prelude to the War of 1812. In 1815, the Treaty of Ghent superseded the Jay treaty.
Barb – Great Speech Guy has replied to Media Douche critiques:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJwpWhvmJfE&feature=related
The protests are a real mixed bag. Have you see the creatures on the balconies, drinking champagne, and sneering? You can jeer at the protestors all you want – but you ARE seeing what happened in Germany, in the late 20’s/early 30’s – and why that Man with the Moustache got so popular.
Miscegenation wasn’t popular in the North even though they didn’t have anti-miscegenation laws. New York and Chicago don’t represent the North anymore than New Orleans represents the South. There really weren’t any parts of the North or South where racemixing was common before the sixties ( outside the cities).