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Re: Scotts/Irish Heritage of the South

Hello,

Not if you talk to professional genealogists who have done the digging in to the ethnic breakdown of the South and American at the time. I once mentioned this alleged Scots/Irish stuff to one and when she got done laughing at me she then set me straight.

America was founded by Englishmen first and foremost. It continued to be settled by Englishmen well into the 19th Century. Germans came over before the Rev War (the original Pennsylvania Dutch as they were called - they were not from Holland but the German states) and after it and again in the mid-1840s. Scots and Irish came over as well but many of the Scots/Irish were actually of Viking descent.

As I have stated, Southern society was very classist like as it was in England which was intentional. Books like "Ivanhoe" were huge in the South. The dominant religion for the upper class South was Episcopalian which had descended from the English Anglican church; Presbyterians were of Scots descent and were a distinct minority. Lower class white were either Methodists or Baptist.

The genesis of the "South is hugely Celtic in nature" comes from the book "Cracker Culture" by the late historian Grady McWhinney. The book has since been taken apart by other historians and genealogists who have published quite a bit of material disproving this. There were indeed pockets of Irish, largely in coastal towns and cities, and Scots, in the upper highlands areas of the South, but the English dominated everywhere else.

McWhinney's book was one basis for the book "Attack And Die" by Perry Jamison and McWhinney. Their thesis was because the Southern soldiers had all of this Celtic blood flowing through his veins, that this made him aggressive in battle. I once met both men and debated them about their thesis. If you got back to the real roots of Western military history - the ancient Greeks - you find that the Western way of war has always been aggressive - the quest for decisive battle. The reason for the Greeks doing it this way was that most of them were part-time soldiers and if they were away at war too long their olive and wheat crops would not be harvested and their city-state would starve. So if they went to war the focus was one or two fast and furious battles, win (hopefully) and then go home and tend crops. The Spartans were the exceptions as due to their slave based economy, they had a full time army, the best of its day by far.

If you study Western warfare history, as I have, you will find that the Romans were also very aggressive yet no Celtic blood was in their veins. Gutavus Adolphus of Sweden was very aggressive as was their King Charles. Frederick the Great, a Prussian, was very aggressive; Napoleon was very aggressive, the British Army was very aggressive and so was the US Army in the Mexican War. That is the real root of the Confederate Army - basically doing what had been done for over 2000 years in Western culture and the blood of one or another culture had ZERO to do with it. Needless to say, this book has also been shot to pieces by military historians. There are a number of books covering the Western way of war that you can read that goes into all of this in great detail.

Greg Biggs

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Re: Englishmen versus Scotsmen in the armies
Re: Englishmen versus Scotsmen in the armies
Scotts/Irish Heritage of the South
Re: Scotts/Irish Heritage of the South
Re: Foreign-born southerners at Gettysburg
Re: Foreign-born southerners at Gettysburg
Re: Foreign-born southerners at Gettysburg
Re: Foreign-born southerners at Gettysburg
Re: Foreign-born southerners at Gettysburg
Re: Englishmen versus Scotsmen in the armies
Re: Englishmen versus Scotsmen in the armies
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!
Re: About The Confederate Battle Flag - Nope!