Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South

I believe that this is one of the most important books written on the social and cultural schism between the northern and southern states. The author's insight that the basic problem between the two sections is based on early colonization patterns, smells like the truth. It can be argued that there were plenty of English descendants in the South and there were plenty of Scots-Irish in the north. Therefore a cultural divide between Celt and Anglo is unlikely. In my opinion, this is not the right angle to look at it. It is the very EARLY patterns of immigration that are, by far, the most important. Once an area is stamped with a certain culture, later immigrants drink it in like mother's milk. This may or may not be a conscious thing. This happens everywhere. I've lived in South Louisiana and have watched how quickly Ango/Celt and even Mexican peoples are absorbed into the prevailing Cajun culture. Granted, if there is a mass migration of a certain cultural group into an area with a lesser number of individuals of a different culture, the more recent culture may swamp the earlier culture. This is not what happened in the South. One of the South's problems is precisely that, following the initial immigration from the British Isles, immigration was relatively low in comparison to the north. Southerners therefore maintained the laid back culture of their Scots' ancestors. It's a comfortable,sociable existence and later Anglo immigrants to the South liked it. This was evidenced during the Civil War by the many northern men--men who had previously lived in the south--who joined the Confederate Army. I'm reminded of a boy who was killed on Culp's hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was wearing a Confederate uniform and his last name was Culp. He was a son from the family for which the hill was named. He went South before the war and, judging by his fatal allegiance, became an ardent southerner--and bearer of Celtic culture. Certainly the roots of secession are multiple, but culture has to be at the top. Slavery was also important but slavery was abolished 150 years ago. Despite this, Southerners and Northerners are still suspicious of each other. Culture. Ron Braithwaite, author of Mexican Conquest novels, "Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"

Although I highly recommend this book to anyone intested in understanding the culture of the American South, it is especially indispensable to Southerners seeking to understand why their ancestors did the things they did. Cracker Culture is the culmination of many years of research into what has become known as "The Celtic Thesis" (which says that Northerners and Southerners had different cultural origins and that this explained their many divisions and disagreements in the 18th and 19th centuries), and the distillation and continuation of many journal articles published by McWhiney and his frequent collaborator, Forrest McDonald. This is one of the earliest scholarly books to take the South down from its "stool of everlasting repentance" (to use Robert Penn Warren's phrase) and to investigate the cultural origins of poor white Southerners - a group that is still understudied by academic historians to this day. Although it sometimes exaggerates to get its point across, and is completely mistaken in its insistence that Celts and the Scots-Irish knew little about farming, it is a major contribution to Southern history by a major Southern historian. Perhaps McWhiney's greatest contribution in this book is when he explains the importance of open-range herding to Celts - including those from Scotland, Ireland, and the American South. In fact, as he points out (according to the 1860 agricultural census), livestock raising and herding was worth twice that year's cotton crop! That is revolutionary, and shows that the poor white yeomen farmers of the South not only kept their Scottish and Irish traditions, but also participated in the United States' predominately agricultural economy in large numbers. To top it all off, Cracker Culture, though filled with historical footnotes, was written for the layman and is a rousing and fun book to read!

This book more or less takes the position that the civil war between the north and south was more a conflict of cultures than anything else. The yankees being predominently of English stock were industrious, money grubbing, uptight dullards and the people of the south having more people of Celtic ancestry were a tempermental, emotional lot who would rather spend their days screwing their women and running through the woods with their hound dogs than working their fingers to the bone from sun up till sun down. Being a southerner of celtic ancestry maybe I should have gotten offended by some of the stereotypes laid out in this book but I found it interesting and entertaining instead.

Dr McWhiney's book is a classic. It states the obvious, i.e. in the course of early American history and the movement of Europeans into the New World,the Celtic fringe of the British archipelago peopled the American South; which has had a profound influence of Southern society. Native Irish, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Border English, Hebrideans, etc., sort of a Celtic soup of sorts, peopled the early South. His book is only controversial to Anglo-centric historians who are still in denial that Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, etc., are actually part of our history and who like to pretend they are just footnotes of English history. And also, controversial to politically minded people who use 'history' to further political objectives. The book is great; a good read, with quantitative research and anecdotal research. It is just pure research with no agenda, a pleasant change in fact. It can be read straight through or by jumping around by topic. Great nighttime reading, full of full facts and oddities of the Old South. One wishes more histories were like this.

My Irish ancestors came to the US between 1836-1861 and settled in East Texas. "Cracker Culture" has given me an insight to their behavior patterns that is totally to the point and accurate as well. Anyone doing Irish genealogy will find in this book the reasons our Irish ancestors were the way they were. Also, an explanation why there was such bitterness between the Yankees and the Southerners in the Civil War