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Title: Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South by Grady McWhiney, Forrest McDonald ISBN: 0-8173-0458-4 Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: December, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting, but not the whole story
Comment: Why is the South so different from the rest of the country? It wasn't always so. In our revolutionary period, Southerners were just as angry at British offenses in the North as Northerners were, while Northerners cheered South Carolina's victory at Sullivan's Island just as passionately as Southrons did. Virginians like George Washington and Daniel Morgan fought in the North while the greatest general of the Southern theater was the Rhode Islander Nathaniel Greene.
Why did Northern and Southern unity quickly become mutual suspicion and eventually dissolve into hostility? Was race the only reason? To Grady McWhiney, the question is largely a cultural one. McWhiney feels that Southern culture was and is Celtic. Most of the original settlers in the North came from England, while most of the South's early settlers came from the most Celtic regions of the British Isles(Ulster, Scotland, Cumberland, the West Country, etc). These settlers put a Celtic stamp on the South, influenced all who settled there, Celt or not, and brought with them their age-old hostility to the English, a hostility that was(and continues to be)reciprocated by the "English" of the North.
Celtic influence on Southern culture cannot be seriously disputed. Anyone who has ever heard bluegrass or country music can hear just one aspect of it. And that North and South are still mutually hostile is also unarguable. The uneducated bigot in the movies usually has a Southern accent and prominently displays a Confederate flag. But I think McWhiney oversimplifies. Celtic influence was there, but it was not alone. As Charles Hudson pointed out in The Southeastern Indians, Native American influence on Southern culture(which McWhiney ignores)was considerable, a fact well known to many of us with families from the southeastern US who have unsuccessfully tried to untangle our genealogies.
In short, Cracker Culture is worth your time. Just don't stop with it.
Rating: 5
Summary: New Paradigm
Comment: Dr McWhiney's book is a classic. It states the obvious, i.e. in the course of early American history and the movement of Europeans into the New World,the Celtic fringe of the British archipelago peopled the American South; which has had a profound influence of Southern society. Native Irish, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Border English, Hebrideans, etc., sort of a Celtic soup of sorts, peopled the early South. His book is only controversial to Anglo-centric historians who are still in denial that Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, etc., are actually part of our history and who like to pretend they are just footnotes of English history. And also, controversial to politically minded people who use 'history' to further political objectives. The book is great; a good read, with quantitative research and anecdotal research. It is just pure research with no agenda, a pleasant change in fact. It can be read straight through or by jumping around by topic. Great nighttime reading, full of full facts and oddities of the Old South. One wishes more histories were like this.
Rating: 5
Summary: Cracker Culture
Comment: This book more or less takes the position that the civil war between the north and south was more a conflict of cultures than anything else. The yankees being predominently of English stock were industrious, money grubbing, uptight dullards and the people of the south having more people of Celtic ancestry were a tempermental, emotional lot who would rather spend their days screwing their women and running through the woods with their hound dogs than working their fingers to the bone from sun up till sun down. Being a southerner of celtic ancestry maybe I should have gotten offended by some of the stereotypes laid out in this book but I found it interesting and entertaining instead.
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Title: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer ISBN: 0195069056 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: March, 1991 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Library of Southern Civilization) by Twelve Southerners, Louis Decimus, Jr. Rubin ISBN: 0807103578 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: January, 1978 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery by William Craft, Ellen Craft, Richard J. M. Blackett ISBN: 080712320X Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: February, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Southern by the Grace of God by Michael Andrew Grissom ISBN: 0882897616 Publisher: Pelican Pub Co Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas DiLorenzo ISBN: 0761536418 Publisher: Prima Lifestyles Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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