Is American Racism displaced Anti-Catholicism or not?

[Macrobius]

Challenging Errigal.

Shoutbox, quoting me:


[Today 09:00 AM] Errigal: 'America's famous 'racism' is simply anti-Catholic anti-celtic bias, displaced.' I can agree with you on other things Mac, but I thinking your going down a false trail with this theory.


There is a bit of history to this discussion:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=29796 (Invention of the White Race)

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33147 (Will WASPs put up a fight?)

I have largely abandoned, as a result of Errigal's criticism in the second thread, my attempt to show that the notion of WASP (a distinctively white alliance connected to protestantism) was in any way pre-conditioned by the experience of the English in or with Ireland generally, and with regard to transfer of persons engaged in the one dispute to Virginia, specifically.

First, the term WASP is no earlier than the 1960s, and second Errigal knows more about Ireland than I do. :) If we revisit that topic, I will need to arm myself more carefully. Actually, that has been my experience discussing Ireland with Irishmen generally.

However, the first part of the thesis is there and is not specifically mine. In fact, if you take one of those 'Black Studies' courses or racial sensitivity training at an American university, you will be fed, either with attribution or without it, Marxist Theodore Allen's Invention of the White Race as gospel.

I take his theory as more or less correct history, strip it of its Marxist jargon and purpose as propaganda, and ask a pertinent question about it:

Why 1689? That is the first year the endogamous 'colour line' marking the second phase of American 'racism' (to use Trotsky's term for it), and the critical moment at which American culture diverged from all others on earth in making colour not only a matter of xenophobia, ethnic classification, and 'race' as then understood, meaning descent from a common ancestor, but a matter of a specific prohibition, not to miscegenate.

Allen presents the move in terms of class analysis: the evil plantation land owners (boo! hiss!) wanted to divide the natural alliance of poor Irishmen, often bond labourers, and blacks, many of whom were also indentured servants, by preventing intermarriage, which would lead to a large rebellious underclass.

In other words, the elites were responsible for segregation, because they were afraid that Irish-Black 'muds' would flood the country and over throw them. (How is that for an exact inversion of Gramscian policy projected on the past??). Hence, 'race segregation' was an invention of the evil landowner class, and an instrument of class warfare. The only proper proletarian revenge, of course, is to race-mix and have the mud-proles, sadly no longer Irish, overthrow Whitey.

Now, Allen certainly marshals facts, historically, and it would seem he is right about the facts. However, is his 'class warfare extended into the bedroom' theory viable? Or is it a projection of 20th century, and indeed 1960, professorial concerns about intrusive fascist governments and race warfare, back into a historical situation that had not of that?

Rather than pinning all my history on dialectical class analysis or whatever it is supposed to be, I look for a plausible alternative explanation as to why blacks should suddenly be treated 'differently' from other foreign-born slaves, a category well established at in late medieval feudal law of landowning and serfdom. Specifically, two prohibitions emerge: 1. Blacks marrying Whites is prohibited and given severe disabilities and 2. Black slavery is made perpetual, rather than term limited. (Partly, this was a consequence of law insisted on by an African who owned other African slaves and argued successfully that he shouldn't have to release his own bondsmen, who were slaves in the law of his country [Sharia?]). However, the larger issue is raised below.

My evidence is:

1. Most American legislation on race topics has been in times of civil strife, especially slave revolts (Nat Turner would be a later instance, triggering 'one drop rule' legislation in the North and various repressive measures in Virginia). Timing with 1689 would seem to indicate a fear related to the political events of 1688-89. The victorious 'Whigs' of that year had protested the treatment of Covenanters, and were interested in revenging themselves by doing to their enemies (a High Church-Catholic alliance called 'Tory', later 'Non-Juror' or 'Jacobite'), what the Tories had done to them.

2. There is an analogy between the Virginian race legislation and the 'penal laws' or civil disabilities placed on Catholics in Ireland.

3. The theme of 'keeping rebellion down' included both blacks and 'Celts' at a time that 'the pretenders' or James III and Bonnie Prince Charles, depending on whom you spoke with, were at large and actively fomenting either Rebellion or Restoration (again, depending on whom you talk to).

4. There is direct continuity between Whig/Tory rivalry and American civil warfare, in the two Wars of Independence (see _Cousins' Wars_). 'Anti-Tory' sentiment was the usual way of framing both. Lincoln (and Calhoun) were both Whigs, the former essentially a revision of Henry Clay. Whig politics in America is, in its fruits, simply Covenanter. The case of Virginia landowners is more complex, since Toryism, connections to the landowner class of Ireland (and the Church of Ireland), and to the Episcopalian party, if not specifically to Jacobites, run deep. However, there were undeniably Puritan and Covenanter elements that far South -- esp. the Clairbourne family in Maryland. Maryland and Virginia fought several wars over this issue in the 1650s, prompting calls for toleration. All that was necessary for the Covenanter/Presbyterian element to incarnate in legislation was a brief shift in power, or a new fear of rebellion.

5. Slave status is well established in Roman Civil Law (Tribonian law). This law had sway on colonial administrators, even though the Founding Fathers joined the Anti-Tribonian league and Thomas Jefferson introduced a fantasy about English Common Law being Gothic (a Whig historical theory used to buttress Hanoverian claims to the throne, 'The First Whig Interpretation of History', but demolished as history by Hume) which theory is still repeated and believed today, as a sort of historical folklore. Witangemot. LOL.

In any event, slave status in that law passed through the maternal line, and some White women were not indentured slaves, but perpetual serfs. Consequently, the issue was more that Whites were freed from perpetual slavery but Blacks were not so favoured. Talk about spin! Rather than celebrating freedom of half the population, our Marxist-Black Separatist sorts prefer to place an extreme burden on the 'Liberators' that they did not do everyone at once. This, of course, is routinely forgiven the 'Founding Fathers' who did exactly the same thing, and also Lincoln, who did not even attempt a 13th Amendment for the North. Perhaps he was too busy freeing Southern slaves to bother with it for his own people.

Virginia did not become securely Covenanter-Puritan-Whig territory until the First War of Independence, of course. At that time, the pro-Roman, pro-Norman, pro-Tory, Episcopalian elements were effectively purged or neutralised. Often, they were sent off to Nova Scotia with tar and feathers. Certainly, their estates were confiscated.

So, in summary, I offer an alternative explanation for 'why 1689'. It wasn't deliberate, Machiavellian social engineering by the 'landowner class' facing down an undivided proletariat that was indulging in equality and race-mixing. It was rather application of a category -- 'the Catholic as social outcast' -- which was the object of a political struggle as old as 1630 and continuing to 1783, at the moment of its supreme crisis and turning point, the Battle of Boyne and final failure of 'Restoration'.

Therefore, I assert that what we now call 'American Racism' started as Covenanter revenge fantasies against Catholics, projected on the existing underclass of the South. The only thing noteworthy about this development is that it did *not* include the Scots-Irish or (white) Catholic serfs who were 'indentured servants' -- the White slaves were treated less harshly than they might. Under the circumstances, it is hard to see this as anything other than clemency. And full freedom followed in 1776 (strictly, 1865), when the last vestiges of White slavery were eradicated.

As soon to be Associate Justice James Wilson of the Supreme Court said, in 1792, in a lecture series attended by George Washington -- who was about to assume the duties of his first administration -- what of feudalism? Need we study its Law? Wilson said, fuit servitudo, and echo of fuit Illium -- once, Troy was. Servitude? Feudal land tenure law? Once it was.

The American Revolutions were both about freeing the slaves. In the first, the White slaves were freed, and in the second, segregation was introduced with blacks having freedman (mediterranean patron-client, or 'welfare dependent' status), but not free man, status.

In this context, Covenanter notions of slavery, as they relate to the Bible and to the Catholic threat and potential for insurrection -- a conspiracy theory about 'evil landowners', evil Tories, Guy Fawkes, marching armies of James, and above all of Rebellion -- are the decisive frame of interpretation.

So, I would answer Errigal -- yes, you are right to suspect that I am re-introducing 'Irish' and 'Catholic' into the mix. Only this time, the battle, if you wish it, is on Virginian soil, not Irish.

I would ask Errigal, if he accepts the challenge of debate, to first clarify whether he believes the theory of Allen, as regards the origin of American 'racism' (the black-white endogamous prohibition, or 'colour line') in the 1689 Virginia legislation is substantially true or not, either with my qualifications or without them. Second, to elaborate on why he believes my theory, explained at length above, is 'going down a false trail'.

[Errigal]

I really don't know enough American history to put up much of a fight in such a debate but I would say I lean more toward Theodore Allen's theory, as it is described above. The creation of a White "middle-class" between the African slaves and the White plantation owners would match the social structure created in the Caribbean colonies such as Barbados. Slave-holders would understandably feel the need for more allies and again understandably chose their fellow Whites. I do doubt though that the poor Whites were falling over themselves to marry or mate with African slaves; people generally prefer to stick to their own group.

The situation in Ireland, and later Quebec was very different. The laws against Catholics in Britain and Ireland had far more to do with combating a rival elite with powerful friends in France, Spain and Rome than with suppressing a class of slaves. Catholics were seen as rivals for power at the highest levels rather than exotic and dangerous slaves similar to the Blacks of the American colonies.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Toleration_1689

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutes_of_Kilkenny

[Hartmann von Aue]

Society didn't "invent" the white race.

One sees this idea constantly trotted out, that bringing in immigrants of European ethnicities is no better than bringing in immigrants non-European ethnicities.

Such an idea is patently absurd. Some ethnicities have more in common than others. There is a spectrum of differences.

Religion, race, and the similarities of European cultures and languages are examples of very important affinities that whites have to each other.

If anything the idea that non-WASP whites are just as culturally disruptive as negroes, orientals or Mohammedans is a kind of judaic chauvinism that certain Protestant sects acquired.

Jewish and Protestant abhorrence of Catholicism is central to this warped, anti-European mentality.

[Errigal]

...

If anything the idea that non-WASP whites are just as culturally disruptive as negroes, orientals or Mohammedans is a kind of judaic chauvinism that certain Protestant sects acquired.

Jewish and Protestant abhorrence of Catholicism is central to this warped, anti-European mentality.

Very true. The idea of Chosen and non-Chosen, Predestination, Old Europe as the corrupting "Whore of Babylon" in contrast to America's New Jerusalem "shining city on the hill" etc, etc.

[Petr]

If anything the idea that non-WASP whites are just as culturally disruptive as negroes, orientals or Mohammedans is a kind of judaic chauvinism that certain Protestant sects acquired.

Jewish and Protestant abhorrence of Catholicism is central to this warped, anti-European mentality.
It's not Protestantism that is systematically supporting the deluge of Latin American immigrants to the USA. Catholicism, a universalist system by its very nature, is more "anti-European" than Protestantism ever could be.

The Protestant "shining city on the hill" that pro-Catholic polemicists like to sneer at was certainly far superior than anything that Catholic societies south of Rio Grande managed to achieve.

""If America had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics, it would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil."

http://www.vdare.com/walker/060111_migration.htm

Influence of Popery on the Social and Political Condition of Nations.

"Or we may take another contrast. At the one extremity of the European continent stands ITALY; at the other is SCOTLAND;--the centre of Roman Catholicism the one, the head of Protestantism the other. What was the relative position of these two countries at the beginning of our era? That a land of sages and heroes; this a country of painted barbarians. But eighteen centuries have accomplished a mighty revolution. Italy, despite the beauty of its climate, the exuberant fertility of its soil, the fine genius of its people, and the heritage of renown which the past had bequeathed to it, is a land of ruins. It has lost all; while Scotland has cleared its swamps, covered its wilds with the richest cultivation, erected cities than which the world contains none nobler, and filled the earth with the renown of its arts, its science, and its patriotism. Why is this? Popery is the religion of the one country,--Protestantism is the religion of the other."

http://www.fbinstitute.com/papacy/b3c5.html

And the Protestant distrust of Catholic subjects had a very real basis in official pre-Vatican II Catholic dogmas which may seem laughable to soft, ignorant moderns but that were nothing to laugh about in bygone eras. Ghibelline emperors in the Middle Ages already had quite genuine reason to fear their own subjects who were more loyal to the pope than to them.

Faith Not to be Kept with Heretics

http://www.fbinstitute.com/papacy/b2c20.html


Petr

[Hartmann von Aue]

It's not Protestantism that is systematically supporting the deluge of Latin American immigrants to the USA. Catholicism, a universalist system by its very nature, is more "anti-European" than Protestantism ever could be.

Christianity isn't to be preached to all men Petr?

Looks to me like the US is a Protestant majority country that is allowing mass immigration, with Protestant pastors supporting John McCain, amnesty advocate.

[Macrobius]

Since it is Memorial Day weekend in the US, and the boards may be a bit thin on participation, I propose we do relax the rules for 'Formal Debate' a bit and allow multiple teams of roving Catholics and Protestants to wander the streets, duking it out, making hits and so on.

However, since it *is* a formal debate, formal debating rules apply, and if you cannot prove topicality you lose. So, since Leon and Petr have ventured into the mosh pit, rather than demanding they take their off topic discussion elsewhere, I request, with decorum, that they prove topicality or be prepared to forfeit their points.

What does current Immigration policy, as it relates to Catholicity and Protestantity, have to do with 'American Racism' as regards the black/white distinction? Perhaps a case can be made, but you need to prove it.

ADDED: Let me be a bit sharper: I believe you two are correct at intuiting that 'American Racism' means, for Liberals, 'things those awful conservatives do' like 'being mean to people'. I would point out, however, that unless you sharpen your definition, you are essentially buying Allen's analysis even if you don't like it -- 'being mean to people' really means attempting to divide the international proletariat with hateful words and actions. On account of this 'dividing' and 'making unequal what is equal' the essential equality of the Working Man is rendered powerless in face of the elites. Is that what you are saying, Leon and Petr?

[Hartmann von Aue]

However, since it *is* a formal debate, formal debating rules apply, and if you cannot prove topicality you lose. So, since Leon and Petr have ventured into the mosh pit, rather than demanding they take their off topic discussion elsewhere, I request, with decorum, that they prove topicality or be prepared to forfeit their points.

What does current Immigration policy, as it relates to Catholicity and Protestantity, have to do with 'American Racism' as regards the black/white distinction? Perhaps a case can be made, but you need to prove it.




I'm sorry I didn't notice this was in the "formal debates" section.

Macrobius, the black/white distinction is one of nature.

No one "invented" the white race. You asked if American Racism is displaced Anti-Catholicism or not.

The American South was not more anti-Catholic than the rest of the country.

The Papacy recognized Jefferson Davis as the head of a state, a man who went to Catholic school.

Chief Justice Taney was a Roman Catholic.

In the rural counties around here, and an outsider might well get some warning shots if he wanders down the wrong road from those who answer "American" when asked their ancestry. Do these people interact with blacks or Catholics regularly? I think not. They have inherited cultural hostility to them.

I would say, America is anti-Catholic and "racist" for different reasons. It seems the Republicans of the 19th were anti-Catholic and for elevating the position of blacks.

The Klan of the 20s represents an interesting synthesis. There is something to your idea, but it can't really account for American racism.

[Macrobius]

... I would say I lean more toward Theodore Allen's theory, as it is described above. The creation of a White "middle-class" between the African slaves and the White plantation owners would match the social structure created in the Caribbean colonies such as Barbados. Slave-holders would understandably feel the need for more allies and again understandably chose their fellow Whites. I do doubt though that the poor Whites were falling over themselves to marry or mate with African slaves; people generally prefer to stick to their own group.


It *could* have been that way, but you have to account for the timing. Why not earlier? Why not later? Why would the landowning class suddenly fear a slave revolt go, intuitively, about building a buffer class at exactly that time? Analogy?

Also, to say that Virginia in 1689 was just another colony like Barbados or Quebec (exactly opposite from your own argument by the way), with identical problems and solutions facing the elite, doesn't address the core of Allen's thesis, which is that what is *unique* about Virginia is they chose *not* to build a middle class of mud-coloured Obama clones, to keep down the true niggers on behalf of the elites.

What is unique about Virginia in 1689 is that the line is drawn, not with an eye to building a buffer class, but to creating a division precisely between Blackness and Whiteness, precisely as regards marriage. No such division existed in any other New World colony, and did not exist in Europe before the Nuremberg Laws (which were based on 1920s Virginia statutes, or at least constructed in admiration of them, at a time when America was uniquely Racist and Nordicist.)

In further support of this point, and rebutting the objection Leon raised about Europeans having an intuitive notion of their own Whiteness (again, arguing there is nothing special here) -- I would simply say that the Virginian legal notion of Whiteness is very strange and *non* intuitive. It makes a man 'legally white' if he is an Octaroon. No one going by skin colour would draw the line there! Or believe they were talking about 'Whiteness' of skin as a criterion. You can argue that race is real and not a 'social construct', but surely 'White children born to Black Quadroons' *must* be a social construct, which makes 'Whiteness' in the legal sense exactly that, starting in 1689.

Also, the later notion of Whiteness, the one we use today (the 'one drop rule' of Jim Crow legislation, reversed to persecute Whites for having dared support the latter), is not based on skin colour or racial characteristics at all. The true horror of Jim Crow legislation was its use to keep Whites in line, by declaring Whites of pure racial ancestry and undoubted skin tone to be socially black if they *associated* with Blacks, or had Black morals.

In American 'Racism' as it evolved, in the North in the 1830s, 'Whiteness' and 'Blackness' mean social solidarity with cultures or 'their people'. Wiggers would be ruled Black by a Jim Crow court, no matter what their ancestry -- if their actions were judged to be 'black' and they associated with blacks by preference. This would have real effects: inability to vote, perhaps penalties or refusal to give licence to marriage approved by the state, with tax consequences. It would also have real social effects.

So, 'American Racism' is something very definite, that evolved into something rather akin to the National Socialist (and to a lesser extent other Fascist) states in Europe. The roots of it lie in the colonial period we are discussing, and it went through three distinct stages. In pre-1689, Europeans will understand it intuitively -- we were they. Post 1830s and in the South post 1920s (when Jim Crow spread there), it is recognisable today by Americans as 'the way it has always been'. In the intermediate period, we have to do history because there is no living continuity to the social attitudes of the ante bellum South. Southerners mostly adopted the victors' (Republicans') values as regards race separation, after the goad of Black Rule was removed in the South and with a bit of prodding by judicially activist courts, and participated enthusiastically in the Jim Crow era. (Jim Crow was introduced in the South over the objection of nearly every legislature. I don't believe South Carolina ever approved it -- the one drop rule would have moved their entire elite over the tracks to the black part of town!)

Moving on to the refutation part of Errigal's post, I mostly don't like the sentence-by-sentence format, but the brevity makes it inevitable:


The situation in Ireland, and later Quebec was very different. The laws against Catholics in Britain and Ireland had far more to do with combating a rival elite with powerful friends in France, Spain and Rome than with suppressing a class of slaves.


They had an eye to that here too, though obviously the *sort* of threat was different, so far away and in a colony. However, the colonial legislation all addresses the threat from France and Spain. You will need to clarify *how* it is different in essence. I agree the mode is different if the fear is collaborators, and the punishments harsher. But that hardly makes it sui generis. It all aims to keep the Catholics in line.

Also, I should add that Catholic-Protestant fighting was not unknown in the New World, usually a 'Tory' alliance of High Church episcopalian partisans vs. a Covenanter/Puritan alliance, 'Whigs'. Besides the Tory/Whig battles (103 of them in South Carolina) during the Revolution, involving mostly American natives fighting each other, with no British troops in sight, we have the 1650s battles between High Church Anglicans and Maryland Catholics (on one side), and independent Puritans on the other. Then, Cromwell's demand that Virginia surrender in 1651/52, and the Virginia legislature's 'compliance' -- oddly, with Clairbourne anxious to sign the document surrendering to his own side. I've looked up the document in the 'State's papers' archives at my local government document repository (UW library). Funny how the Protestant Collaborator who 'lost' in Maryland was interested in surrendering Virginia to Cromwell, while Berkeley 'retired' to his estates to lead the 'Old Dominion'.

In any event, it is hard to say that American history in the 18th century, and especially in Virginia, which has 'Plantations', calls the Revolutionary enemy 'Tories' and the period of history 1760-1776 'The Tory Ascendancy' has no reference at all to Ireland or its religious concerns. After all 'Tory' means, as a term of slander before it designated a faction, 'An Irish Criminal'. That about sums up the colonial attitude towards their own elite. They saw them *precisely* as the Anglican estate owners and clerical class in (Southern) Ireland. Probably because many of them were, or were sons of such.

So, I have demonstrated the continuity with Ireland by immigration and transplanting a similar, even identical, British culture, and have shown the continuing relevance to American history -- indeed it is the organising principle of it -- through the 1860s at least, and in some respects down to this very day.

It remains to show the essence of thesis, that Blacks were given Catholic style disabilities in 1689 Virginia, and the elites of that time treated them identically as Catholic serfs on Irish plantations, if somewhat more moderately Errigal would like us to believe, on account of the remoteness of France.

However, I note that no one has refuted my central contention, that laws in 1689 in America were made in contemplation of political events elsewhere in the Empire. Nor has anyone provided a plausible alternative explanation for why just that legislation (novel and entirely unique among all European colonies), and why exactly then. Nor has anyone dared to say it is just chance, the butterfly effect showing Racism Happens.


Catholics were seen as rivals for power at the highest levels rather than exotic and dangerous slaves similar to the Blacks of the American colonies.


Tell that to a female Irish bondservant living on feudal estate under the Ascendancy I suppose.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Toleration_1689

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutes_of_Kilkenny

Only one of these deals with New World soil, and it proves my point. The Quebec Act (1774) was the immediate trigger of the American Revolution in the state where it started. It removed civil disabilities for Catholics in Quebec, some patriots said preferred them, and proposed the introduction of an Episcopalian episcopacy into Massachussetts, a hallmark of Neo-Tory sentiment at the hight of its power. From 1760 on, we have a series of such legislation, and it reads like a drum roll to revolution.

American politics is best understood as 'Old Whig' (See The Lamp of Experience, Coulborn, which I have linked many times in this forum). American patriots, in their two wings of the Party -- Federalist and Democratic-Republican -- were a faction of the total politics of the British empire that opposed the 'betrayal' of 1688-1689 they felt George III's government represented. They were first and foremost Whigs of the Glorious Revolution, prepared to refight the Boyne on American soil, against the New James, if need be.

(Again, see _Cousins' Wars_ and its enthusiastic mention in the 'Anglosphere' school, alongside _Albion's Seed_ and the work of Fukuyama on the 'end of history', for continuing relevance of this imagery in American politics -- now in service of the Empire, of course).

[Macrobius]

A brief reminder that 600,000 males, mostly White, died, and millions were wounded, and a whole society destroyed, discussing this question, and 'Memorial Day' is primarily a remembrance of that blood-letting. In any event, if this debate grows over long, momento mori.

There will be virtual sherry and other refreshments, and casual discussion, in the lobby, after the final summarising arguments.

Moving on to the responses (and Leon, you can also read my reply to Errigal).



Macrobius, the black/white distinction is one of nature.


Yep. But the White Octaroon one is not. See the above post.


No one "invented" the white race. You asked if American Racism is displaced Anti-Catholicism or not.


The American White race (as both Errigal and I agree with Allen's thesis at a factual level), was clearly invented. Allen doesn't buy the term 'social construct' by the way. Do read the summary of his book linked to the thread with that title. It is two pages, and very perspicuous.


The American South was not more anti-Catholic than the rest of the country.


That is a statement that varies with social class. The point is not relevant -- Anti-Catholicism

In the period we are discussion, Protestants fought Catholics in Maryland (you know, with guns and stuff). Some Southerners (High Church Anglicans) fought with the Catholics and won. After the 'victory', the Anglicans took the Catholic churches and made them their own. Gotta love that pro-Catholicism.

Then Cromwell won, then the Restoration, then the Glorious Revolution, then the First War of Independence, then the Second.

It's a fight, man. What can I say? Anti-Catholicism was of the essence of it. Britain from 1689-1832 was a Protestant Supremacist state making the world safe for Protestants, and fighting Catholics and High Church (Jacobite, Non-Juror) sympathisers, wherever it found them. Culloden, say.


The Papacy recognized Jefferson Davis as the head of a state, a man who went to Catholic school.

Chief Justice Taney was a Roman Catholic.


Yes. Continuing relevance of Catholicism and integration of the remnants of the High Tory party (and Catholics, and Jews) within Southern society noted. Also, the War of Secession was not fought between Protestants and Catholics, though some vestiges connected to the term 'Whig' (Henry Clay, Lincoln, even Calhoun and Alexander Stephens), and a continuing engagement with 'Covenant' in an abstract political sense was still of the essence of the conflict.

It was a common meme of the Revolution that 'Catholic' societies ('priest ridden' is Jefferson's version) were prone to Slavery, and evil as a consequence of it. At the same time, more Tory landowners in Virginia -- some of them crypto Catholic and all overtly High Church Anglican (well, the 'Virginia Churchmanship', which is a bit different and doesn't fit the High/Low categorisation) -- were happy to have slaves, Black and White, and perpetuate Roman Civil law with all the vigour of a Latin American landowner.

That is what I mean by 'displacement': the anger, political energy, and conspiracy theories of the Protestant-Catholic rivalry were redirected from the Catholic-Protestant divide to the White-Black divide. Also, the overthrow of the 'Ascendancy' led directly to a triumph of Covenantalism, in both its Federalist form and Jefferson's 'Republic'.

Thus, American Whigs found themselves inheriting the social role of Tories -- who like Catholic slaveholders elsewhere in the New World had no compunction about slavery, Black or White. This is *precisely* what led them to posit Race as the ultimate justification for their social position: they had to embrace *both* the protestent meme about Catholics being in favour of (white) serfdom, *and* the inherited memes of oppression.

This makes Whig slaveholders *conflicted*. It is probably why they lost. A competent South American elite would not have lost the Second War of Independence. Virginia was unique in that regard as well.


In the rural counties around here, and an outsider might well get some warning shots if he wanders down the wrong road from those who answer "American" when asked their ancestry. Do these people interact with blacks or Catholics regularly? I think not. They have inherited cultural hostility to them.

I would say, America is anti-Catholic and "racist" for different reasons. It seems the Republicans of the 19th were anti-Catholic and for elevating the position of blacks.

The Klan of the 20s represents an interesting synthesis. There is something to your idea, but it can't really account for American racism.

[Macrobius]

Well, as this is a formal debate, this is the final call for rebuttals and closing arguments, if Errigal, Leon, or Petr care to post such (or someone new wants to get in a full argument-rebuttal-closing cycle under the wire). As Affirmative, I'll go last in about two hours.

After that, the thread will open up for post-debate discussion. Anyone may then join in.

[Errigal]

Well, as this is a formal debate, this is the final call for rebuttals and closing arguments, if Errigal, Leon, or Petr care to post such (or someone new wants to get in a full argument-rebuttal-closing cycle under the wire). As Affirmative, I'll go last in about two hours.

After that, the thread will open up for post-debate discussion. Anyone may then join in.

Feel free to go straight to the post-debate discussion.

[Macrobius]

Feel free to go straight to the post-debate discussion.

LOL - I'd given up on a response from TimeZone UTC -1 or wherever you are.

OK folks we're done here -- open thread here. Enjoy the virtual sherry.

[Errigal]

I just add that if someone wished to prove a link between race laws restricting African slaves in the New World to the laws restricting Roman Catholics in the British Isles, then a study of the slavery laws in the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonies would be worthwhile.

[Macrobius]

Good points. Here are the direct links to Allen's summary, which discuss slave laws in various colonies, in detail (without the comparison you suggest, which no one has made as a professional historian, since being Marxists those who present the facts marshal them with a different object):

Part 1: http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen.html
Part 2: http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen2.html

ADDED: Note esp. this point from part 1:


31. The essential elements that gave to Protestant Ascendancy after 1689 in Ireland and white supremacy in continental Anglo-America the character of racial oppression were those that first destroyed the original forms of social identity among the subject population, and then excluded the members of that population from admittance into the forms of social identity normal to the colonizing power. The codifications of this basic organizing principle in the Penal Laws of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and the slave codes of white supremacy in continental Anglo-America present four common defining characteristics of those two regimes: 1) declassing legislation, directed at property-holding members of the oppressed group; 2) the deprivation of civil rights; 3) the illegalization of literacy; and 4) displacement of family rights and authorities.


Again, this is the current mainstream academic view you can drop lots of money learning.

My beef with Allen is that the critical moment of his whole theory of race-construction is 1689 Virginia. He notes that the products of the codes in Ireland and Virginia are so profound he can spend a chapter outlining the parallels, yet when it comes time for theorising about what *happened* in 1689 to trigger the said laws, all he can think of is Marxist cant about landowners and colonial slave rebellions. I guess he really does think Ireland was basically a Caribbean-style slave-ocracy. Black and White are so equal in his view that distinguishing Ireland and Jamaica, at a fundamental level, makes no sense to him. That is, his own (Anglican) White Supremacism is so internalised and unconscious he can fail to see any reason at all to respect the Irish differently from Africans. It is like Charles Kingsley's crack: White Monkeys instead of the usual Black ones. How pathetic. Of course, he does this in the name of 'equality' and World Revolution. Don't Marxists always?

What is missing of course is a non-Marxist reworking of the same material, this time getting the Revisionist History correct.

Comparisons of the American South to various colonial societies, expanding on Allen's work, have been made by Dr Frank Sweet:

http://backintyme.com/essays/

Essentially *all* the essays at this site are relevant to the topic.

[Petr]

Britain from 1689-1832 was a Protestant Supremacist state making the world safe for Protestants, and fighting Catholics and High Church (Jacobite, Non-Juror) sympathisers, wherever it found them.
I know why you use 1689 as the starting point of this period, but what important happened in 1832 to end it?

I understand that it was 1829 that was the great year of "Catholic Emancipation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Relief_Act_1829


Petr

[Macrobius]

I know why you use 1689 as the starting point of this period, but what important happened in 1832 to end it?

I understand that it was 1829 that was the great year of "Catholic Emancipation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Relief_Act_1829


Petr

The date is somewhat conventional on both ends as you say -- Catholic Emancipation being a big part of it. 1832 was the Reform Bill. Part of the 1832 legislation was the 'suppression of the Irish bishopricks' meaning that the CofE bishops in Ireland were effectively dis-established. This was the topic of Keble's 1833 sermon, 'National Apostasy', and conventionally taken to be the beginning of the Oxford Movement -- a new phase in Protestant-Catholic relations, as Newman, coming from an Evangelical background, saw an opportunity to use 'tractarian' preaching methods and tactics to recreate the Non-juror party as 'balanced pro-Catholic'. However, I didn't have this particularly in mind when I chose the date. It merely illustrates the importance of it. The constitutional failure of King William to block reform (and the story that was circulated, variously credited, that he was prepared to force it) indicates that the Constitutional question was decided at that time, although Britain remained formally protestant as regards the (increasingly irrelevant) monarchial succession.

Catholic Emancipation can be construed as largesse, not an abandonment of 'protecting protestantism' as a State goal. After the 1832 reforms, however, it is clear that Britain's guardianship of protestantism was not the raison d'etre of the State, as it was held to be in 1688/9. Cool indifference, sentimental moralism, and sometime freethinking hostility (as in PM Russell's set) are the new keynotes of government. The parallel phenomenon in America would be known as the Gilded Age.

[Petr]

Irish-American, ex-Catholic, expatriate eXile writer John Dolan (whom many suspect of being the true identity of columnist "War Nerd") has offered some opinions on America's supposed anti-Catholic identity (tinged with Taig resentment and atheistic profanity, for sure):

Just as the Catholics surrendered their faith, the Baptists plundered all of the once-marginal, "loony" issues, like fighting abortion. And that's when the anti-abortion movement finally began to matter. Pitiful rallies like the one I attended in 1978 are no longer so pitiful. Because the real America, the Ulster-America, had weighed in at last.

Let's face a very unpleasant, important fact about the US: the bedrock white American population is largely descended from, and entirely dominated by the cultural traditions of Ulster Protestants - Ian Paisley's tribe, the people alluded to by that deceptively mild term, "Scotch-Irish." And this tribe's oldest hatred, their Ur-hatred, is for the Papists they used to hang from meathooks in Northern Ireland.

Sure, they've found new objects for their hate in the new world: blacks and gays and anybody else who happens to be in range when Scots-Irish eyes are glinting with hate (which is all the time). But underneath, whispering in every Baptist sermon, is that old horror of Rome, the "Whore of Babylon."

When Kennedy was running for president, the great positive-thinking minister Norman Vincent Peale warned that American values would collapse if a Catholic were elected. When Al Smith, also an Irish Catholic, ran decades earlier, one of the most powerful propaganda tools the Republicans had was a pamphlet that circulated all through the South showing Smith opening a tunnel. The caption explained that it was a secret tunnel leading from the White House to the Vatican, so the puppet Smith could get his instructions from his Jesuit masters. It's this sort of quaint Americana that led the historian Arthur Schlesinger to call anti-Catholicism "the deepest prejudice of the American people."

According to another prominent cultural historian, Samuel Huntington, the only reason Ulster-America has relaxed its old hatred of Papists is that "American Catholicism assimilated many of the features of the Protestant mainstream."
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7698&IBLOCK_ID=35


Petr

[Petr]

This was the topic of Keble's 1833 sermon, 'National Apostasy', and conventionally taken to be the beginning of the Oxford Movement -- a new phase in Protestant-Catholic relations, as Newman, coming from an Evangelical background, saw an opportunity to use 'tractarian' preaching methods and tactics to recreate the Non-juror party as 'balanced pro-Catholic'.
Newman created his famous "doctrine of development" while he was still a via media Anglican. Ultramontane conservative Catholics of the 19th century did not originally like such a liberal, basically evolutionist idea at all:

"The problem for Roman Catholics is not whether there was development. The problem lies in the fact that Vatican I says there was no development. In other words there was no acorn. It was a full blown oak from the very beginning and was therefore the practice of the Church from the very beginnning."

http://www.christiantruth.com/vaticanIanddevelopment.html

But in the latter part of the 20th century, the Roman Catholic church officially adopted this originally Anglican idea as its own. Thus we might consider that the conversion of Newman ultimately turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory to Rome, for he brought in a concept which would make conservative Catholicism implode in Vatican II!

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/05/who-speaks-for-rome.html

Let us go back to Cardinal Newman, who is the common denominator in all of this. In his Anglo-Catholic days, he tried to establish his position by appeal to tradition. But this generated a conundrum. Where do you draw the line? What is the cut-off point? 2C? 3C? 4C? 5C? 6C?

He had to keep moving the goal post to get everything in he wanted and needed. But, of course, by pushing the goal-post ever further ahead, he was pushing into the primacy of Rome. So he simply gave up.

Now you might suppose that this would cause him to retrace his steps and return to his Evangelical roots. But, no, he decided to complete his apostasy, but come up with a whole new argument, based on the development of doctrine. This theory, which is all it is, or was—before Vatican II canonized it—is quite striking on several grounds:

1. The theory is very much an artifact of 19C intellectual currents, which marked a shift away from essentialist categories to organic metaphors and the primacy of the historical process—ascending to the Absolute. Marx, Darwin, and Hegel are just three of the best-known representatives of this more fluid and dialectical outlook.

And it was applied to Bible history before it was extended to church history. You find this in the evolutionary view of religion, applied by Baur and Wellhausen to the Old and New Testaments.

Newman’s historiography is a philosophy of history which is applied retrospectively, retroactively, and anachronistically, to church history.

2. And this, in turn, leads us to a central contradiction in his theory. For his theory of tradition is a theological innovation. This is not a traditional understanding of tradition. It is, rather, a novel understanding of tradition.

3. And the oxymoron gets even worse. For the traditional view of tradition was locked in at Trent, and reaffirmed at Vatican I. On this view, tradition is oral dominical tradition. It consists in the disciplina arcani which Christ passed on, orally and privately, to the Apostles. When, for example, Trent says that Christ instituted the seven sacraments (Session 7, canon 1), the Tridentine Fathers meant this quite literally. The seven sacraments were directly instituted by Christ.

Of course, you can’t find that in the NT. But, for them, that is not a problem since the justification lies in appeal to oral tradition, to the disciplina arcani.

So Newman, ironically enough, defended his conversion to Rome by redefining Catholic tradition. Indeed, by defining Catholic tradition contrary to Catholic tradition.

4. Yet this is not the supreme irony. The supreme irony is that Vatican II canonized his redefinition of Catholic tradition. This redefinition did not issue from a natural, internal evolution of thought. Rather, it was introduced into this new habitat by an outsider, a convert to Rome. And it only took root in Catholic soil by uprooting the native foliage.

Petr

[Macrobius]

Petr -- your analyses that you quote are on point and definitely capture the importance of the Oxford Movement, for both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, as the origin of what has 'evolved' into Affirming Catholicism today -- Hans Kung would probably call it 5th wave Christianity. Darwinism, Nature-religion, 'the branch theory' of Christian churches (ecumenism), the Liturgical movement, 'Christian Socialism' and many other things can be traced to the 1840s tractarian period, and Newman's subsequent career in the Roman church.

One minor nit:


Newman created his famous "doctrine of development" while he was still a via media Anglican.


When he wrote the book, he had decided to convert and was in the process of converting, but was not yet officially Catholic, so the book was written when he was neither Anglican nor Catholic.

One item you don't pick up on is that Newman's movement was the first to introduce the 7th Council into official Anglican theology (if it is there) -- 'affirming the image' being a crucial ingredient in the 'incarnational theology' that embraces gays, say, as being 'in God's image and human too'. Ditto for race, race-mixing, anti-slavery, and other forms of Liberation. Doubtless, an end to 'patriarchalism' and the priesting of women.

Before Newman, the 'High and Dry' school he reworked were 'six council Anglicans' (now forgotten). The Low Church and certainly the Puritans adhered to 4 -- minimum number to avoid formal charges of heresy, and possible burning at the stake.

The 7th Council was positively rejected, even by the High Church. Personally, I would say acceptance of the 7th council is what distinguishes Protestant from Catholic, at its root, in Western theology. Ecumenism and the Branch theory is predicated on the idea that 'reunion' (of Anglicans, Rome, Orthodox, maybe others) can be framed on a 'concordat' that respects mutual affirmation of the 7th council. This was a novelty in Anglicanism, and the Tractarian movement was responsible for it.

Rome and Orthodoxy have both tended to embrace the 7 council theory -- trimming back their own more numerous ecumenical councils, or giving a special status to just those 7. This is dubious, since Rome and Constantinople both have an 8th council, it is different, it was called to interpret the 7th, and came to opposite conclusions. Arguing that the 7th council is a potential rallying point (as Newman does), for an 'ecumenical' and universal church, consummating the Via Media, is a dangerous reworking of what really happened in Church history.

[Errigal]

Just as the Catholics surrendered their faith, the Baptists plundered all of the once-marginal, "loony" issues, like fighting abortion. And that's when the anti-abortion movement finally began to matter. Pitiful rallies like the one I attended in 1978 are no longer so pitiful. Because the real America, the Ulster-America, had weighed in at last.

Let's face a very unpleasant, important fact about the US: the bedrock white American population is largely descended from, and entirely dominated by the cultural traditions of Ulster Protestants - Ian Paisley's tribe, the people alluded to by that deceptively mild term, "Scotch-Irish."

I thought the largest ethnic group among Whites is German-American.

[Macrobius]

I thought the largest ethnic group among Whites is German-American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

Yes and no. Germans have a plurality in the rural, less populated areas of the Old Northwest and Great Plains, however cultural dominance has not been an issue since WWI, when German culture per se was harshly suppressed.

[Kodos]

In any event, slave status in that law passed through the maternal line, and some White women were not indentured slaves, but perpetual serfs. Consequently, the issue was more that Whites were freed from perpetual slavery but Blacks were not so favoured. Talk about spin! Rather than celebrating freedom of half the population, our Marxist-Black Separatist sorts prefer to place an extreme burden on the 'Liberators' that they did not do everyone at once. This, of course, is routinely forgiven the 'Founding Fathers' who did exactly the same thing, and also Lincoln, who did not even attempt a 13th Amendment for the North. Perhaps he was too busy freeing Southern slaves to bother with it for his own people.

What exactly are you talking about here, the 13th amendment applied throughout the country and the New World has indentured servant (generally for those sentenced to transportation) and slave status. It never had serf status.

The emancipation proclamation otoh applied to areas in rebellion and specifically not the border states.

[Macrobius]

What exactly are you talking about here, the 13th amendment applied throughout the country and the New World has indentured servant (generally for those sentenced to transportation) and slave status. It never had serf status.

The emancipation proclamation otoh applied to areas in rebellion and specifically not the border states.

You understand me. Lincoln did not attempt to free the slaves under his control (in the Emancipation proclamation). That is, he did not attempt to have an equivalent of the 13th amendment passed as regards the putative North.

Your assertion there were never White feudal serfs [lifetime villeinage] in Virginia is unsupportable and in fact false. Legal status in the colonies was entirely determined by British law, which recognised such status and created categories in the New World that followed the mother's status. All that was required to create a serf was the appropriate sort of person living in the appropriate sort of land tenure.

By the way, the normal legal term for 'serfs' in Latin is coloni -- Colonists. There were some 10 categories, and that was the highest. Relationship to a Corporation (e.g., the Virginia Company) defined specific, lifelong, feudal duties, just as one could be a rentier of an ecclesiastical corporation (renter on church property, having feudal status) in the old world.

Just because textbooks like to claim that Whites were invariably 'indentured servants' doesn't mean it was so -- it is rather tautological on 'White' status anyway, once all Whites are declared to be free. (Do you know when all White Men were declared to be free? When 'indentured servitude' was forbidden and what the commonest form of it was in the 19th century? When 'serfdom' as land tenure ended in the New World, and when in England?)

By the way, do you happen to know what the social status of a White child born to a female 'indentured servant' was? And to whom that child belonged? And whether indentured servants were 'permitted' to marry, and if so whom, and of what class?

Those are rather inconvenient questions *not* addressed in our history textbooks.

[Kodos]

Your assertion there were never White feudal serfs [lifetime villeinage] in Virginia is unsupportable and in fact false. Legal status in the colonies was entirely determined by British law, which recognised such status and created categories in the New World that followed the mother's status. All that was required to create a serf was the appropriate sort of person living in the appropriate sort of land tenure.

Im not an expert on this but I thought serfdom in Britain had all but dissapeared in Henry VIII's time (when many were enclosed off their land and "freed" whether they wanted to or not, hence the Elizabethan "poor law")... I also thought another point of Elizabethan law was that while slavery was allowed in English possessions "the air of England is too pure for a slave (and presumably serf) to breath in".

Im aware that some of the slaves sent to the colonies were white's (Cromwell's government sent massive numbers of Irishmen and covenanters/royalist scots to Barbados as slaves) but Ive never read any reference to serfdom existing in them.

[Macrobius]

Im aware that some of the slaves sent to the colonies were white's (Cromwell's government sent massive numbers of Irishmen and covenanters/royalist scots to Barbados as slaves) but Ive never read any reference to serfdom existing in them.

Serfdom is a form of land tenure. It was abolished in Britain in the 1920s. You are correct that by then it had become less onerous, or the options available for exit (Industrial Revolution) allegedly more attractive, so you don't hear about it much. In the late 17th and early 18th century, it was very much alive as an institution. It was abolished in some of His Majesty's colonies in 1776 for Whites. For Blacks in the US, by constitutional amendment No. 13. As you correctly note, serfdom in Ireland and Scotland, enforced punitively after political defeats, was both onerous and resented until a comparatively late date. We have no hesitation at all calling such persons White Slaves, with no qualifications or nonsense about '7 years' indenture' (the term of a residential lease called 'one life').

Britons were always hesitant to call their slaves slaves -- as early as Hobbes, they were called 'servants', and the term 'slave' reserved for someone who actually had shackles on. Even behind bars we use the euphemism, penal servitude. However, that doesn't mean that serfs in many periods subsequent to Hobbes did not have lives very much like Blacks in early 19th century Virginia. Identical in fact, at law, until 1776, leaving aside only the strictures on intermarriage which fossilised the normal status of a White 17th century serf on English or American soil (including indentured servants, while they were indentured!) in a relic that persisted until the mid-19th century in the South.

[Joe McCarthy]

Depending on definition Allen's thesis may not hold up. Some development of racial consciousness in terms of guaging differences existed at least as far back as classical times, with both Greeks and Romans represented, particularly Romans. Some examples:

Socrates saw it as the foremost task of the guardians to protect the racial purity of the city's inhabitants in The Republic.

Ovid drew distinctions between Ethiopians and Romans in noting how the Ethiopians were said to have developed dark skin in The Metamorphoses

Both Horace and Juvenal decried racial degeneration. In fact, particularly poignant is Juvenal's denunciation in Against Women in which he condemns the women of Rome for mating with niggers and birthing mongrels. This sounds very modern in the racial sense. One might even dare say 'American'.

Another problem with Allen's thesis, at least in the overall sense, is that American 'racism' probably did not originate with blacks. Sam Huntington, certainly a more eminent scholar than Allen, pointed out that the origins of America's 'original sin' is best traced to King Phillip's War, which was proportionately the most bloody war in American history. The aftermath of that war bred a sense of suspicion and hatred of whites toward 'the other' of all races according to Huntington.

And while some will look askance at the citation of Arthur Kemp, he did do a worthy job of noting the racial divisions existing in various cultures, from ancient Egypt to Elizabeth I's expulsion of 'blackamores' from London.

[Kodos]

This makes Whig slaveholders *conflicted*. It is probably why they lost. A competent South American elite would not have lost the Second War of Independence. Virginia was unique in that regard as well.

Mac how can you say this. Given the North's higher population, better rail network, and industrial capacity I don't see how this would make a difference.

If there was any lack of will among elements of the Southern population it was with the pro union poor Scots Irish farmers (who often were the descendents of deported covenanters) up in the hill country who did not want to be forced into the Confederate army so the lowland planters could own slaves.

There were not too many pro Union Southern planters whether Catholic, Calvinist, or High Church. Also other then Brazil most of the Latin American countries HAD abolished slavery by that time.

[Jake Featherston]

I thought the largest ethnic group among Whites is German-American.

The vast majority of White Americans are either German or Ulster Protestant (Scots-Irish) in descent, in about equal numbers (and frequently mixed). English, Irish, and Italians constitute the majority of the remainder. Ulstermen are somewhat undercounted in America, because they are (by far) the people most likely to identify as "American," rather than by some Old World ethnicity. One reason for this is because the designation "Scots-Irish" is kind of clunky, and sympathy for the Irish side in the Northern Ireland stuggle is almost universal in this nation (albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm), so not many people are going to find the designation "Ulsterman" very applealing either (assuming they even know what/where "Ulster" is, which most Americans probably do not).

[Hartmann von Aue]

I thought the largest ethnic group among Whites is German-American.

Some say so but I'm not sure I believe it. It sort of depends whether you count British together, how you count self-described "Americans."

Here's more detailed information:

http://geogdata.csun.edu/US_Anc.html

[Jake Featherston]

I don't think so.

Here's more detailed information:

http://geogdata.csun.edu/US_Anc.html

Those maps are cool. They need to be posted:

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US112B.GIF

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US115B.GIF

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US116B.GIF

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US123B.GIF

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US108B.GIF

[Macrobius]

The vast majority of White Americans are either German or Ulster Protestant (Scots-Irish) in descent, in about equal numbers (and frequently mixed).

The maps don't bear this out. They show the upper midwest is primarily German (up to 90%), with a strong admixture of English. New England is strongly English (up to 60%) and other areas, mostly in the South about 13% max.

Scots-Irish are nowhere more than 10%. However, the large concentration of 'Irish' in Kentucky and Tennessee are probably Scots-Irish, not Catholic immigrants just like Boston. I could be wrong, but I suspect some failure to distinguish Ulstermen from Irish Catholics, with different results in different parts of the country. In any event, the South is clearly Anglo-Celtic, as frequently alleged.

A lot of 'English' could be the Northern English 18th century migration which, politics aside, was ethnically similar to the Lowland Scots and their Scots-Irish cousins. That is the 4th wave backcountry migration of Albion's Seed.

[Felix the Cat]

Americans fought a war because they wanted to stop being English. It would be surprising if many of them described themselves as such to census-takers, even if their family origins were indeed in England.

Mormons don't seem to have the same reticence, which is interesting.

[Jake Featherston]

Scots-Irish are nowhere more than 10%. However, the large concentration of 'Irish' in Kentucky and Tennessee are probably Scots-Irish, not Catholic immigrants just like Boston. I could be wrong, but I suspect some failure to distinguish Ulstermen from Irish Catholics, with different results in different parts of the country. In any event, the South is clearly Anglo-Celtic, as frequently alleged.

My understanding is that you have to take the following map into account when trying to determine just what portion of the U.S. population is made up of Ulstermen, because the Scots-Irish constitute the majority of the people who respond "American" when asked their ancestry. This map suggests that is correct, since the "Americans' are found in the same places the Scots-Irish are found.

http://130.166.124.2/atlas.us1/US130B.GIF

[Petr]

If there was any lack of will among elements of the Southern population it was with the pro union poor Scots Irish farmers (who often were the descendents of deported covenanters) up in the hill country who did not want to be forced into the Confederate army so the lowland planters could own slaves.
Revisionist Michael A. Hoffman II agrees - below are excerpts from his booklet They Were White And They Were Slaves. Here's one pro-White writer who does not indulge in overt Dixie-nostalgia (without being any Yankee-enthusiast either, btw):

p. 42

Poor Whites and the Southern Confederacy

Even if they attained their freedom, dirt-poor Whites were forced to compete against negro slave labor. Jobs were few and Southern planters sat idly as poor Whites died of malnutrition for want of food and medicine. Negro slaves were expensive. To protect their investments, White aristocrats usually treated their negro slaves well, providing for adequate food, clothing and medication even as poor Whites in the same town sickened and died from disease and malnutrition.

Try to envision the 19th century scene: yeoman southern Whites, sick and destitute, watching their children dying while enduring the spectacle of negroes from the jungles of Africa healthy and well-fed thanks to the ministrations of their fabulously wealthy White owners who cared little or nothing for the local "White trash."

p. 45

Congressman David Wilmot sponsored a law to ban all Black slavery in the American West. He dubbed his proposed law, "the White Man's Proviso." He was bitterly opposed by the Southern elite. Wilmot told Congress that he intended to preserve America's western frontier for "the sons of toil, my own race and color." (Charles B. Going, David Wilmot, Free-Soiler, p. 174).

During much of the Civil War the political and military leaders of the Confederacy could not travel in certain parts of the Deep South without armed escorts (Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, "The Civil War," The United States at War Audio Classics Series, Part Two), for fear of attack from "Upcountry" Southern Whites who hated the planter aristocracy and the war they saw as being for the sole benefit of the expansion of the planter's "infernal negroes." Upcountry Southern Whites consisted in large part of the survivors and the children of the survivors of White slavery who resided in the hills, mountains and Piedmont regions of the South under frontier conditions.

This all resembled the situation in late Roman empire, where writers like Juvenal bitterly described how poor Latin freemen were forced to beg favors from the Oriental slaves of rich men.


Petr