American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

At the same time, the Midlanders, many of whom were of German descent, spread into the Heartland with their culture, which favored weaker governments, neighborliness, and ethnic tolerance. Their settlements were located between Yankeedom and Appalachia and became tolerant places where no one faith or people dominated. 

Midlanders reached the Midwest along the National Road. Pennsylvania Germans built settlements in Ohio that reminded them of the towns they’d left. In Indiana, their settlements were thinner, as they faced the dominance of Appalachians called Hoosiers. Though Hoosiers were ambivalent about slavery, they seemed too pro-slavery to German Americans. However, the Germans also tried to avoid Yankee areas, as they feared Yankees would shut down their beer halls on the Sabbath and otherwise stamp out their culture. 

Midlanders settled a large part of Illinois and came to dominate parts of Missouri. Continued immigration meant that Midlander culture dominated the Heartland as Germans left Europe in large numbers to escape monarchies, feudalism, and the failed revolutions of 1848. Quakers also headed west to Ohio and central Indiana, which became the center of Quakerdom in the 1850s.

When Midlanders went west, they established towns that tended to be dominated by one ethnic group, but counties were pluralistic in nature. Germans from Europe tended to have more education and knowledge of farming than their American neighbors, and they often avoided assimilation. They were notable for their rootedness, farming the same land for generations, in a country that was far less rooted.

Politically, the Midlanders voted with the Democratic party as a way of resisting the Yankee-dominated Republican Party. At that time, the Democrats were the party of the Deep South, the Tidewater, and immigrants, particularly Catholics. Over time, as slavery became a more pressing issue, those Midlanders whose churches stressed social reform (including the Dutch Calvinists and Swedish Lutherans, among others) sided with the Yankees and the Republicans, while those whose churches did not stress social reform (including the German Lutherans and Roman Catholics, among others) stayed with the Democrats. The Midland became the area that could make or break each federal issue. Enough sided with Lincoln to push the South to secede.

Appalachians have long been associated with the frontier, as they were among the first to move west. Lured by the promise of better and cheaper land, they moved west faster and in greater numbers than did other nations. Their power was deflected only by that of the Deep South as they moved across the frontier out of Virginia as far north as Illinois and as far west as Texas in what was called the Great Migration. 

Appalachians tended to settle in rural areas and to establish few towns or schools. Their illiteracy has made it difficult to track their progress. Their farming used simple techniques, and they tended to move and uproot themselves quite often. Called “Hoosiers” or “butternuts” (because of the color of their clothing), they were criticized by Yankees for their perceived indolence and rootlessness. Yankees sent missionaries among them to convert them, but the Appalachians preferred fiery itinerant preachers. The Yankees had a hard time understanding the Appalachian way of speaking and living, and the Appalachians resented the Yankees. 

Appalachians also tended to distrust politicians and to champion farmers over educated people and professionals. They backed the Democratic party, although they did not care much about slavery, because they disliked Yankees and the Yankee tendency to support government-enforced moral values. 

Further south, the Borderlanders contended with the Cherokee, who fought back against attempts to encroach on their land and who sided with the British during the American Revolution. Many Cherokee intermarried with the Appalachians, and this Métis class tried to assimilate. For example, the Cherokee intellectual Sequoyah developed a Cherokee alphabet, allowing the Cherokees to publish a newspaper and translate the Bible. They also wrote a constitution and maintained that they would not give up any more of their land.

Andrew Jackson, the first Appalachian president, was of Scots-Irish stock. An enslaver, he fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, winning fame for defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans. He personally oversaw the takeover of millions of acres of Indigenous lands before he even became president. Supported by Appalachia, the Deep South, and Tidewater, he wanted minimal government and championed the liberties of individuals (provided they were white). He advocated for the removal of the Cherokee from their lands and ignored a Supreme Court law that ruled this removal unconstitutional. White settlers moved onto Cherokee land, and the Cherokee were sent on the Trail of Tears, causing 4,000 deaths. 

While Appalachians shared a culture no matter where they lived, those in the Deep South developed a more violent culture of lawlessness and vigilantism. There, violence that would have been condemned by Yankees or Midlanders was celebrated. Appalachians were drawn to new religions that stressed personal salvation and the rewards of the afterlife. In 1801, thousands of people gathered for a Christian revival in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and by the 1830s, Southern Methodism and Baptism had spread through Appalachia. These religions emphasized believers’ personal connection to God, and by 1850, evangelical religions dominated Greater Appalachia.

During the colonial period and the early Republic, the Tidewater had more sway than other southern regions; however, by the 1830s, the Tidewater had begun to lose power to the Deep South. Hemmed in by Borderlanders, the Tidewater could not expand west, while the Deep South was rapidly expanding. In fact, it grew tenfold in this period.

The Deep South was also able to dominate because the Borderlanders’ primary crop, tobacco, was losing ground, while cotton, the mainstay of the economy of the Deep South, was booming. Cotton became more profitable after the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, which made harvesting the crop easier, and the Deep South increasingly pushed Borderlanders out of their lands. As the cotton economy boomed, there was an increasing need for enslaved laborers, whom the Deep South acquired from the Tidewater and Appalachia. Marched from the coast inland in a trip that historian Ira Berlin has called the “Second Middle Passage” (202), enslaved individuals found much harsher conditions inland. Enslavers lived in fear of revolts, and after an uprising led by Denmark Vesey in South Carolina in 1822, members of that state formed an arsenal called the Citadel to put down any further insurrections.

The Deep South developed a philosophy that celebrated slavery and that was predicated on an elite living off the backs of workers, similar to the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Southerners believed that they were able to concentrate on the finer things because of slavery. They were opposed to the idea that the races were equal; southern Methodists and Baptists justified slavery based on the biblical story of Ham, who they believed was cursed and the ancestor of modern enslaved Black Americans. Southerners also considered Yankees a lesser race, as southerners believed that they themselves were descended from the superior Norman race while the Yankees were from the inferior Saxons.

Members of the Deep South also held the Acadians of Louisiana in low regard, as the French and Spanish Americans in that city had developed a more lenient form of slavery and looser race relations. Enslaved Black laborers were allowed to purchase their freedom, and 45% of the city’s Black population was free, sometimes intermarrying with the white population. Deep Southerners regarded Creoles, or descendants of the French and Spanish, with contempt and suspicion, particularly because the Creoles were Roman Catholic. The two populations remained distinct, and the Creoles of southern Louisiana were a Republican southern enclave in a Democratic-controlled South. 

By the 1850s, the Deep South had expanded as far as it could, and the region began to fear that Yankees would seize control of the government and end slavery. They began to contemplate expanding to Mexico or Nicaragua, and they lived in fear that Spain would grant freedom to Black Cubans and that the island would become a refuge for self-liberated Black Americans. Mercenaries tried to take Cuba by force, and Presidents Pierce (a Yankee) and Buchanan (a Scots-Irish Borderlander) tried but failed to buy Cuba. Newspapers in Appalachia, the Tidewater, and the Deep South called for Cuba’s annexation, and forces under Appalachian William Walker tried to seize Nicaragua. A secretive southern group called Knights of the Golden Circle tried to seize parts of Latin America to create new states built on slavery.

At the same time, El Norte was in a vulnerable position. After Mexico became independent in 1821, it was bankrupt and went through periods of political chaos. After independence, El Norte no longer received support from Mexico, so the region looked to the US for supplies, trade, and immigrants. Mexico was powerless to stop the flood of immigrants from Louisiana into Texas. Most of Texas north of Corpus Christi was given away to American settlers. Settlers were supposed to convert to Roman Catholicism and give up slavery, but, by 1830, settlement was out of control and settlers outnumbered Norteños. The new settlers did not convert to Catholicism and spurned Mexican laws and customs. Even an 1830 law that banned immigration into Texas failed to stem the tide, and American immigrants outnumbered Tejanos by a 10-to-1 margin.

Norteños resisted Mexico’s first dictator, Santa Anna, and in the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836, Tejano leaders joined secessionists to be free of Mexico. Appalachian leader Sam Houston captured Santa Anna’s troops, and Santa Anna agreed to withdraw behind the Rio Grande, effectively making Texas independent from Mexico. However, immigrants from the Deep South and Appalachia had no intention of allowing Tejanos to have a role in their new government. Many were offended by the Tejanos’ biracial makeup, and they had long distrusted and disliked Latin Americans. Norteños became strangers in their own land, robbed of their land and livestock and relegated to inferior status. Unless they could prove that they had supported the revolution, all Norteños were deprived of citizenship and the right to hold property. Culturally, North Texas became part of Appalachia, while the Deep South absorbed the Gulf Coast. 

The Deep South and its “Golden Circle” powers forced Congress to grant Texas statehood as a state where slavery was legal in 1845; Yankees and the Midlands opposed this while the Deep South, Tidewater, Appalachia, and New Netherland were in favor. When Mexico did not recognize the border, US President Polk declared war, with everyone except Yankees in favor. Yankees feared the expansion of slavery and decried the war as imperialist. The US captured Alta California, New Mexico, much of El Norte, and even some Mexican cities. The question became how much the US should take over. Yankeedom argued against annexation, while Appalachia was in favor. The Midlands were pacifist, while the Tidewater and New Netherland were on the fence. In the end, in 1848, the US took only the northern area, including what is now Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California, in part because the Deep South was opposed to taking over a multiracial region. The Norteños would continue to face disenfranchisement and discrimination in areas that were about to become the Left Coast and the Far West.

The West Coast is most similar to New England because it was founded by Yankees, but it developed its own utopian ideology that put it at odds with the deferential El Norte and the libertarian Far West. At one point, El Norte controlled the Pacific coast up to Monterey, and Britain and Canada vied over the other portion. Now, Yankeedom was pitted against New France, which controlled the Hudson’s Bay Company. That company’s rivals were Yankee fur traders, who not only wanted a piece of the fur trade but who also wanted to bring their brand of salvation to the West, which was in part a reaction to growing Catholic immigration to the US.

Yankees sent missionaries to the West, including Jason Lee, who founded the region’s first college (which became Willamette). However, Appalachian settlers outnumbered the Yankees. In Oregon, the Borderlanders tended to settle on farms, leaving the towns, government, and newspapers to the Yankees, who founded Salem and Portland. Scandinavian, Irish, and Japanese immigrants also outnumbered the Yankees who settled in Washington. 

In California, Yankees who settled south of Monterrey tended to conform to Californio ways, learning Spanish and practicing Roman Catholicism. North of Monterrey and inland, Yankees vied with Appalachian settlers for control. After the Gold Rush of 1849, Yankees increasingly turned to saving the region from those they considered barbarians descending on the area. The mass of people streaming to the region and their violent ways gave rise to another Yankee crusade to save souls. Yankees streamed west to set up schools and support missionary efforts. The College of California, which is now Berkeley, was founded by the son of the president of Yale along with other Yankee clergymen, and the school board of San Francisco was composed entirely of Yankees. 

Yankees, however, barely managed to make their influence felt beyond the coasts, as people from around the world, including Chinese, Appalachian, Irish, and Italian immigrants, settled there. The culture that formed had the marks of Yankee idealism but also the individualism of Appalachia.

Woodard describes the Civil War as a battle between the Deep South, supported by the Tidewater, and Yankeedom. All the other regions were neutral. 

The early 1800s were marked by four nations—Yankeedom, the Deep South, Appalachia, and the Midlands—extending their cultures across the West. By midcentury, the Deep South and Yankeedom were the most powerful coalitions, and their ideologies were at loggerheads with each other. For many years, the Deep South had been winning this war, powered by the profits of cotton. However, European immigration to Yankeedom and the Midlands meant that these regions had greater populations and more power in the US House of Representatives. By the 1860s, the Deep South realized that to maintain its power, it was going to have to leave the Union.

Outside of Yankeedom, few cared about slavery. However, Yankees, such as William Lloyd Garrison (editor of the anti-slavery journal The Liberator), were adamantly opposed to it. Frederick Douglass, a self-liberated Black American from the Tidewater, went to Massachusetts. Yankees believed the states that allowed slavery represented despotism, and they argued that slavery led to anti-Christian practices. In 1860, they voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, who was of Yankee, Appalachian, and Midland ancestry. 

The Deep South fought the Civil War to defend slavery, which it claimed was the foundation of a socially superior society sanctified by the Bible. Defenders argued that enslaved laborers were happier than workers in the North and denied claims of enslavers raping enslaved women and giving rise to biracial children. Others in the South also defended slavery, though they did not endorse the idea of an aristocratic republic. As a result, the Democratic party split between Appalachian sections that did not support secession and Deep Southern sections that did. These areas were the first to secede after Lincoln became President in 1860. 

If the South had not attacked federal arsenals and other buildings, it might have avoided war and negotiated a peaceful secession, as only Yankeedom was opposed to the Deep South at the war’s outset. New Netherlanders had introduced slavery to the continent and were not opposed to slavery, but, by the 19th century, they had lost control of their region to Yankees (who abolished slavery in 1827). New York City, whose bankers had ties with Southern plantation owners, was decidedly in the Southern camp until Fort Sumter, when secessionists attacked the federal fort in Charleston’s harbor. The Midlands were also ambivalent about the war until Fort Sumter. Though Midlanders had voted for Lincoln, their commitment to pacifism overwhelmed their dislike of slavery. The Tidewater, whose main crop, tobacco, had lost ground, found itself forced to side with the Deep South. As war loomed, the philosophy of being Norman (as opposed to the Saxon Yankees) returned, and the Tidewater embraced an aristocratic ideal over the Puritan idea of equality.

Appalachians were torn between their hatred of Yankeedom and their hatred of the Deep South. They hated the Yankee drive that subsumed individualism, but they also hated the Deep Southerners’ aristocratic ideals. They hated abolitionists and the Fugitive Slave Law alike, but Fort Sumter pushed most of them into the Union camp, to the surprise of Southern planters. West Virginia, populated by Appalachians, broke away and became its own state in 1863.

After the South lost the war in 1865, teachers, government officials, and missionaries from Yankeedom and the Midlands went to the region to establish schools, including Black colleges, and reform the region along northern lines. However, this attempt at cultural conversion failed, and after Union troops withdrew from the South in 1876, the region returned to its old ways, depriving African Americans of their rights.