Further proof that South Carolina Whites Thought of Themselves as Anglo Saxon Not Celtic

What ever cultral differences between the various groups is minor at best.

They are substantial even today Gaelic culture in places where it is still spoken shapes to a great degree a person world
Exactly. This was a 19th century construct used to justify racial superiority and acts in the name of.
There are Anglo Saxon and Celtic cultural worldviews and ,language even as subsets of view.
 
They are substantial even today Gaelic culture in places where it is still spoken shapes to a great degree a person world

There are Anglo Saxon and Celtic cultural worldviews and ,language even as subsets of view.
At least in the US now and most likely during the Civil War what real cultural differences would their be between WASP's and Celtic peoples? Yes their will be various religious and class differences based on individual circumstances but what real cultural differences? Over time has I mentioned both groups will make babies together and will more or less merge and create a new identity.
Leftyhunter
 
I suggest you read Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fisher.Most likley the best book on the traditions and difference in the founding groups of America.
I've never met an Anglo-Saxon Protestant who wasn't "white" so I guess you could call them an ASP. Well let me correct myself I've known people who are very Anglo-Saxon in their culture, but their ancestors were not "white "but they had him been raised in England for generations. There are plenty of Anglo-Saxon Roman Catholics as well. They are y Anglo-Saxon insofar as their particular cultural and linguistic traditions,thye have chosen himor themsle him ves.
Of course I got sucked into the white thing, white should be abandoned for some other term like indigenous Europeans. I myself am a Buddhist great respect for traditional Japanese culture and Chinese culture and for that matter Indian culture.

As for your question but what real cultural differences? The answer to that would depend upon how you define real cultural differences.
That would be entirely subjective unless one were to set out some sort of precise sociological criteria for defining the groups. Although the great diversity for lunch bunch would like you to believe you were all going to meld into one identity it certainly hasn't happened in the UK, or even in Europe.
Being that my grandmother's people are from Northern Ireland and having spent a good deal of time there as well as in Wales ,Scotland and the Yorkshire Dales I have seen definite differnces in each groups worldview, disposition, and what they consider valuable, what they don't. Not to mention the differences in dialect.
The differences are real enough for the people that the dissolution of the United Kingdom into England, Scotland and Wales is a possibility.
 
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I suggest you read Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fisher.Most likley the best book on the traditions and difference in the founding groups of America.
I've never met an Anglo-Saxon Protestant who wasn't "white" so I guess you could call them an ASP. Well let me correct myself I've known people who are very Anglo-Saxon in their culture, but their ancestors were not "white "but they had him been raised in England for generations. There are plenty of Anglo-Saxon Roman Catholics as well. They are y Anglo-Saxon insofar as their particular cultural and linguistic traditions,thye have chosen himor themsle him ves.
Of course I got sucked into the white thing, white should be abandoned for some other term like indigenous Europeans. I myself am a Buddhist great respect for traditional Japanese culture and Chinese culture and for that matter Indian culture.

As for your question but what real cultural differences? The answer to that would depend upon how you define real cultural differences.
That would be entirely subjective unless one were to set out some sort of precise sociological criteria for defining the groups. Although the great diversity for lunch bunch would like you to believe you were all going to meld into one identity it certainly hasn't happened in the UK, or even in Europe.
Being that my grandmother's people are from Northern Ireland and having spent a good deal of time there as well as in Wales ,Scotland and the Yorkshire Dales I have seen definite differnces in each groups worldview, disposition, and what they consider valuable, what they don't. Not to mention the differences in dialect.
The differences are real enough for the people that the dissolution of the United Kingdom into England, Scotland and Wales is a possibility.

I agree with most (if not all) of what you said, though I'm a bit unsure what you are targeting with this statement:

Although the great diversity for lunch bunch would like you to believe you were all going to meld into one identity it certainly hasn't happened in the UK, or even in Europe.

Is that an argument in regards to something related to the OP, to a comment made by someone else, or are you referring to some generalized group? Just not sure so figured I'd ask.
 
There's a dimension of time here, as well as the spacial definition.

Speaking on behalf of my late, great, racist elders, who were only a generation removed from the war, they were Anglo-Saxon when insulting the Irish, and Celtic when singing the Skye Boat song and claiming to have ancestors who were exiled for fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie. In actual fact, my research has found their most recent immigrant ancestors were in this country 100 years before Bonnie Prince Charlie and thus had nothing to do with him, although a number of them could fairly have been called Cavaliers, some were even exiled for being Cavaliers, and a few did hail from Scotland.

The usage was mostly a euphemism for class, as represented by religion. "Anglo-Saxon" when used in a complimentary sense to refer to themselves meant "not Catholic," thus excluding the recently wealthy Irish and Italians from the society of the old money planter class. But Catholics were okay if you went back far enough in time that they were fighting Puritans.

So, Catholics good 1750, bad 1890. Celts good if you meant Robert the Bruce, bad if you meant the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Celts were even worse if they fled the potato famine, then got rich and wanted into your country club. But Celts were great if you were making faux haggis for Burns night at the same country club.

It's racism, it doesn't have to make sense.
 
I agree with most (if not all) of what you said, though I'm a bit unsure what you are targeting with this statement:



Is that an argument in regards to something related to the OP, to a comment made by someone else, or are you referring to some generalized group? Just not sure so figured I'd ask.
no justsome rather peculiar people in academia that talk alot about diversity.But then form into cliques that are not inclusive at all.
 
no justsome rather peculiar people in academia that talk alot about diversity.But then form into cliques that are not inclusive at all.

Ahh, was wondering if I missed something.

In defense of some (certainly not all) of said people, it's natural for humans to for in cliques, even saying you have an idea or belief about diversity instantly groups you with people that agree and against people that disagree. In response to your specific comment:

Although the great diversity for lunch bunch would like you to believe you were all going to meld into one identity it certainly hasn't happened in the UK, or even in Europe.

I think many people (again certainly not all, I can't speak for everyone myself and some I know) would argue that many of our cultures meld, but that doesn't imply they will all meld into one. As you mentioned the different British cultures that influenced American ones... those adopted other cultures along the way and helped influence specific American sub-cultures... so just putting out there that one can believe in the inevitable melding of cultures without the belief that they will all meld into one, just into merged and different sub cultures... much like those British cultures themselves have many different influences that went into them.
 
There's a dimension of time here, as well as the spacial definition.

Speaking on behalf of my late, great, racist elders, who were only a generation removed from the war, they were Anglo-Saxon when insulting the Irish, and Celtic when singing the Skye Boat song and claiming to have ancestors who were exiled for fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie. In actual fact, my research has found their most recent immigrant ancestors were in this country 100 years before Bonnie Prince Charlie and thus had nothing to do with him, although a number of them could fairly have been called Cavaliers, some were even exiled for being Cavaliers, and a few did hail from Scotland.

The usage was mostly a euphemism for class, as represented by religion. "Anglo-Saxon" when used in a complimentary sense to refer to themselves meant "not Catholic," thus excluding the recently wealthy Irish and Italians from the society of the old money planter class. But Catholics were okay if you went back far enough in time that they were fighting Puritans.

So, Catholics good 1750, bad 1890. Celts good if you meant Robert the Bruce, bad if you meant the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Celts were even worse if they fled the potato famine, then got rich and wanted into your country club. But Celts were great if you were making faux haggis for Burns night at the same country club.

It's racism, it doesn't have to make sense.

It's racism, it doesn't have to make sense.

Well said, Allie.

One thing I found out about the Scots-Irish, when trying to figure out where an ancestor came from before showing up in Arkansas, is that when a Scots leader moved to Ireland and many of his followers went with him, they all took the last name of the laird. So, many of the Scots-Irish with similar last names are not genetically related. Just because my ancestor's last name was Montgomery, doesn't mean he was related to most of the Montgomery lineages in the South. According to DNA, he wasn't.
 
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There's a dimension of time here, as well as the spacial definition.

Speaking on behalf of my late, great, racist elders, who were only a generation removed from the war, they were Anglo-Saxon when insulting the Irish, and Celtic when singing the Skye Boat song and claiming to have ancestors who were exiled for fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie. In actual fact, my research has found their most recent immigrant ancestors were in this country 100 years before Bonnie Prince Charlie and thus had nothing to do with him, although a number of them could fairly have been called Cavaliers, some were even exiled for being Cavaliers, and a few did hail from Scotland.

The usage was mostly a euphemism for class, as represented by religion. "Anglo-Saxon" when used in a complimentary sense to refer to themselves meant "not Catholic," thus excluding the recently wealthy Irish and Italians from the society of the old money planter class. But Catholics were okay if you went back far enough in time that they were fighting Puritans.

So, Catholics good 1750, bad 1890. Celts good if you meant Robert the Bruce, bad if you meant the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Celts were even worse if they fled the potato famine, then got rich and wanted into your country club. But Celts were great if you were making faux haggis for Burns night at the same country club.

It's racism, it doesn't have to make sense.
We should not demand consistency from the irrational.
 
Well there's no monopoly on confabulation and confused history in families. There was one good thing that came out of the Virginia Racial Integrity Laws, from a genealogical perspective. It gives a list of family names that are Indians passing as whites. So working on genealogy I've been able to find quite a few missing Indian ancestors for people because of that list.
It's not at all uncommon to find a surname from an area with five or six Y haplogroup's attached to it, take a look at the website Border Reivers DNA. Most common people in the 16th century didn't have a last names. You might be known as John's little Mary if that was your dad's name. There might be more than one of those so they would sometimes add another descriptor blacksmith John's Mary. In the future that might become Mary Johnson or Mary Smith from the same genetic line. Not to mention the Viking and the wood pile DNA issue
As for eugenics that came primarily out of California and Pennsylvania were the California eugenicists who visited Germany in the prior to the days of the third Reich.
What's worse it looks like there is some eugenics movements making a bit of a comeback these days. I guess it's no bad idea that's not worth a second try.

Sorry about your animus towards Virginia, 18th Virginia though it gets confusing given nom de plume. I hear all kinds of irrational prejudice statements for both progressives and conservatives now days so I guess it's not just isolated to the 19th century.
 
Fascinating conversation here. Pat, I'm so grateful for your contribution to cutting through this enduring myth of the "Celtic South." The truth, as we're seeing here, is far more complex. I'm especially curious about the whole assumption of Pan-Celticism that we like to run with today. My feelings based on what I've seen so far was that this, too, was an incredibly complex subject. We cannot assume that a mid-nineteenth century Scotch-Irish Protestant American would have acknowledged common "Celtic" identity with a Roman Catholic Irish immigrant, nor even that immigrant Scots, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Irish Catholics, etc of that period would have necessarily viewed themselves as sharing much common ground. There are many more factors to consider--regional, political, socioeconomic, and religious differences chiefly among them. A standard of what we think it means to be "Celtic" is far less important than understanding how people of that era viewed their own identities. Reality often had very little to do with it. I believe that this mythologized Celtic/Scottish identity was a means for certain Southern elites both during and after the Civil War to draw a sort of racialized divide between North & South to manipulate the populace into looking beyond both their commonalities with Northerners (i.e. the "Yankee race") while likewise overcoming their class resentments toward the slaveholding plantation class. "They're the English, we're the Scots!" exploits a familiar historic dichotomy to strengthen the notion of the Southern Cause being part a much broader struggle for liberty.
 
Somebody once again contacting me on this site whether South Carolinians are Anglos on or Normans. But here's the question I wonder if anybody outside of South Carolina really wonder what they are.
 
My only contribution to this discussion is that I think you all are underestimating the popular culture/romantic resonance of "Anglo Saxon" history and heritage particularly as spread through the immensely popular Walter Scott novels. Ivanhoe, for example, basically precipitated the incredibly popular jousting culture that spread across the South in the 1850s with all the accompanying fake heraldry and hooey. All this was accompanied by Anglo Saxon heritage romance and rediscovery in the South.
 
My only contribution to this discussion is that I think you all are underestimating the popular culture/romantic resonance of "Anglo Saxon" history and heritage particularly as spread through the immensely popular Walter Scott novels. Ivanhoe, for example, basically precipitated the incredibly popular jousting culture that spread across the South in the 1850s with all the accompanying fake heraldry and hooey. All this was accompanied by Anglo Saxon heritage romance and rediscovery in the South.
Good point, but not sure I am underestimating this at all. I think that it contributed to Anglo self-identification.
 
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Well there's no monopoly on confabulation and confused history in families. There was one good thing that came out of the Virginia Racial Integrity Laws, from a genealogical perspective. It gives a list of family names that are Indians passing as whites. So working on genealogy I've been able to find quite a few missing Indian ancestors for people because of that list.
It's not at all uncommon to find a surname from an area with five or six Y haplogroup's attached to it, take a look at the website Border Reivers DNA. Most common people in the 16th century didn't have a last names. You might be known as John's little Mary if that was your dad's name. There might be more than one of those so they would sometimes add another descriptor blacksmith John's Mary. In the future that might become Mary Johnson or Mary Smith from the same genetic line. Not to mention the Viking and the wood pile DNA issue
As for eugenics that came primarily out of California and Pennsylvania were the California eugenicists who visited Germany in the prior to the days of the third Reich.
What's worse it looks like there is some eugenics movements making a bit of a comeback these days. I guess it's no bad idea that's not worth a second try.

Sorry about your animus towards Virginia, 18th Virginia though it gets confusing given nom de plume. I hear all kinds of irrational prejudice statements for both progressives and conservatives now days so I guess it's not just isolated to the 19th century.

I recall that the aristocratic snobs of Richmond never found that Jefferson and Varina Davis met their high standards of heritage or cultivation. My experience living in Virginia was that my friends and I, who were from lesser states in the South, still didn't meet some imaginary standards of background in the late 20th Century when we traveled to state agency conferences and working groups around The Commonwealth. I've lived in mostly red states and areas, so it's not about politics.

My immediate ancestors left the counties in Virginia and West Virginia where their father, uncles, cousins had fought with the 18th Virginia Cavalry sometime after the Civil War and moved on west.
 
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