American nations colin woodard sparknotes

History Correction

OUTLINE OF COLIN WOODARD’S AMERICAN NATIONS

Introduction: pp. 1-13, presentation of the thesis that the USA is divided among 11 regional nations: Yankeedom, New Netherland, Midlands, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, Deep South, New France, El Norte, Left Coast, Far West and First Nation, with a capsule summary of each one; p. 16, Wilbur Zelinsky’s Doctrine of First Effective Settlement; (initial settlers set a cultural tone that later comers must adjust to, whatever their own cultures may be); pp. 16-17, the Big Sort thesis (today’s Americans like to settle with like-minded people and are increasingly separating themselves from regional cultures different from their own).

Chapter One: pp. 23-33, Founding El Norte: p. 24, Spain’s New World objectives; p. 26, demographic catastrophe; pp. 26-27, Roman Catholic religious motives of the Spanish; p. 27, provocation of English anti-Catholicism; pp. 28-29, inclusive attitude toward Indians but insistence that they become like Spaniards or be punished; pp. 29-31, autocratic and corrupt government; pp. 31-33, remoteness and poverty.

Chapter Two: pp. 34-43, Founding New France; pp. 34-39, visions of de Mons (feudal and hierarchical) and Champlain (friendly, embracing alliance with Indians rather than the Spanish model of conquest and enslavement or the English model of driving them away); p. 39, goal was Indian assimilation into French culture but the assimilation went the other way, with the French embracing Indian lifestyles, technology and values; pp. 39-43, collapse of the French feudal ways and the rise of New France’s dependency on Indians for military protection.

Chapter Three: Founding Tidewater, pp. 44-56; Places a high value on authority and tradition; prefers social hierarchy to equality; Anglican not Puritan; favors rule by a well educated hereditary elite to mass public participation in politics;

Chapter Four: Founding Yankeedom, pp. 57-64: Utopian; emphasizes the possibility of transforming society and, in fact, the obligation of God’s elect to pull off that transformation. It stresses the universal importance of education, local political control, and the pursuit of communal good as a higher value than the advancement of the individual. It is comfortable about an expansive government because it sees decisive government as reflecting the will of the citizenry (New England town meeting model).

Chapter Five: Founding New Netherland, pp. 65-72: Unabashedly commercial; values diversity, tolerance and upward mobility with an overwhelming emphasis on private enterprise; founded by a Netherlands which had foreshadowed the American Revolution by two centuries with themes of revolt against a huge empire, the declaration of a natural right to rebel, and the creation of a kingless republic; note that the Dutch invaded England successfully in 1688 even though the English have found a way to conceal this; Dutch also invented modern banking and the global corporation; with a commitment to free inquiry the Netherlands also became a haven for the persecuted; surrender of New Netherland to the English Duke of York in 1664 was accompanied by a surrender agreement that guaranteed many features of Dutch life. Note: New Netherland gave an important religious toleration to the Jewish people in the 1650’s, another step toward American religious liberty. The principle Dutch presence in the New World, conquered by England in 1664. At one time the haven of the Pilgrims before their Mayflower Voyage.

Chapter Six; The Colonies’ First Revolt, pp. 73-81: The decision of King James II to create a unified colony to be called the “Dominion of New England” in the 1680’s provoked what was really a series of three separate revolts each in Yankeedom, New Netherland and Tidewater. Not participating: Midlands and the Deep South, then both very recently settled nations. But each participant had their own special motives for revolting. For Yankeedom, it was to defend its self-government, local control of its own affairs, and its Puritan religious values. For New Netherland, it was the desire to avenge and reverse the English conquest of their colony in 1664. For Tidewater, it was the perception that James had undermined aristocratic rule.

Chapter Seven: Founding the Deep South, pp. 82-91: Does not come directly from England, originates through settlers who first move to Barbados in the Caribbean and then move to South Carolina circa. 1670; unabashed slave culture: a tiny elite commands total obedience, enforced with state-sponsored terror against both slaves and any abolitionists; planters live in cities rather than on their plantations, imitating the power of the British aristocracy but not its service ethics (in contrast to the Tidewater ruling class, where both aristocratic ideals are pursued); introduces the idea of caste rather than class into American life; aggressive and expansionistic culture.

Chapter Eight: Founding the Midlands, pp. 92-100: the model for the “Middle America” of today; lots of Quaker influence; based from William Penn’s Philadelphia; tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, produces modest wealth; emerges as frequent kingmaker in national elections. Midlanders believe in the innate goodness of all humans (Quakers reject traditional Christian doctrine of original sin). Pacifistic, and the inner light that all possess means than all can participate politically. Welcomes Germans as one of the first non-Anglo waves of immigration. Economic success but political disaster: no particular sense of constitutional order or political skill. Consider their motto on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to ALL the inhabitants thereof.”

Chapter Nine: Founding Greater Appalachia, pp. 101-111: : Last to be founded in colonial times, in great waves between 1717 and 1775. Refugees from Northern Ireland and Anglo-Scottish borderlands; arrive as refugees not colonists; head straight to the frontier to found a society beyond the reach of the law; land hungry; warlike; either imitate or are hostile to native Americans; have various cultural taboos among themselves that they enforce by violence; spread along the Great Wagon Road between Pennsylvania and Georgia. They fight for the freedom of the clan and will resist any side that threatens the clan.

Chapter Ten: p. 116, brief account of Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian War; pp. 116-118, British centralization and arrogance, particularly of the ruling class; pp. 118-119, plight of native Americans after the departure of the French; p. 119, Yankeedom revolt and the Boston Tea Party; pp. 119-120, First Continental Congress as a quasi-international assembly of the various American regional nations; pp 120-123, complex feelings about rebellion and independence in Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, New Netherland and Deep South; pp. 123-126, more details of the First Continental Congress.

Chapter Eleven: pp. 127-136, an account of the Revolutionary War from the perspective of each of the regional nations that participates; pp. 136-139, the Tidewater and the Appalachian peoples turn the Revolution toward independence and become the swing factions in the conflict; pp. 139-140, the late phases of the war in Tidewater;

Chapter Twelve; pp. 141-142, The Continental Congress as a diplomatic body composed of different regional nations and the formation and character of the Articles of Confederation; pp. 144-149, the movement for greater democracy frightens the elite and helps to provoke the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which produces a plan of government considerably less open to popular participation.

Chapter 13: addresses why the nations of the North did not join the United States. Pp. 150-151, Maritime support for the American revolt is ended by arrival of massive British reinforcements in Nova Scotia; pp. 151-152, military failure to capture New France; p. 152, the Loyalist myth of Canada and Canadians as fundamentally British (almost entirely false) and proudly un-American (not entirely true); truth is that loyalists failed to overturn the fundamentally Yankee and Quebecois culture of the Maritimes and that settlers in Ontario were fundamentally Germans, Quakers and Dutch from the Midlands and New Netherland; Anglo Canada thus was fundamentally Yankee east of Quebec and Midlander to the west of Quebec, while Quebec itself remained French; pp. 152-153, New Brunswick founded as a loyalist enclave and a haven from the Yankee and republican culture of Nova Scotia; pp. 153-154, motley nature of refugees from New York City, the last stronghold in the US for opponents of the American Revolution; pp. 154-155, foundation of Upper Canada (Ontario) by refugees from pacifist Midlands sects; pp. 155-156, formation of governments dictated from Britain not by the peoples of the British North American provinces.

Chapter 14: early struggles of the new American government: p. 157, suspicion of the Constitution of the United States as counterrevolutionary; p. 157, independent republic of Vermont prior to its US statehood; pp. 158-172, grievances of Greater Appalachia leading to the creation of the mock state of Franklin and the Whisky Rebellion; pp. 162-165, President John Adams lost re-election by attempting to impose Yankeedom’s emphasis on communal rather than individual freedom on the rest of the country, with the Alien and Sedition Acts also showing the Yankee preference for internal conformity over diversity; pp. 165-167, Yankeedom’s alienation from Jefferson’s policies of embracing France, shunning Britain, and expanding westward; pp. 167-169, Yankee resistance to the Jefferson embargo and Madison’s War of 1812; p. 169, the Hartford Convention and its failed proposals for the reform of the federal government; p. 170, implications for Yankeedom of the Treaty of Ghent, Battle of New Orleans and the rise of “Greater Appalachian” Andrew Jackson to political dominance.

Chapter Fifteen: Yankeedom: pp. 173-182, spread New England community-based culture to upstate New York, parts of Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois, and almost all of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota; they were often joined by Scandinavians due to mutual interests in frugality, sobriety, civic responsibility and abolitionism and state run churches; p. 178, Yankeedom tended to repel people who resented Yankee meddling in other people’s business and their tendency to pressure other people to conform to their cultural norms; p. 180, Chicago became a borderlands town between Yankee and Midland Wests; pp. 180-182, religious orthodoxy among Yankees declined but their self-righteous determination to create a perfect world remained.

Chapter Sixteen: Midlands: p. 183-188: balance wheel between intolerant, communitarian mentality of Yankeedom and the individualistic hedonism of Appalachia; present in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and northernmost Texas; heavily influenced by Germans and Quakers; pluralistic culture makes the Midwest known for neighborliness, family-centered progress, practical politics, and distrust of big government; tended to support the anti-Yankee Democratic party until the 1850’s, when the Midlanders began to split over the slavery issue. The split was religious in nature, the side one took depended on whether or not people belonged to a religious denomination that believed in making the world holy. The anti-slavery side narrowly won, helping to elect Lincoln in 1860 and demonstrating the Midland tendency to be Kingmaker in national elections.

Chapter Seventeen: Appalachia: pp. 189-199: first across the Appalachians, and the most widespread of the groups, settling in parts of virtually every state along the western range of these mountains; tended to resist education and literacy; tend to move often; farm destructively; resent Yankee efforts to assimilate them and fight Tidewater and Deep South domination too; champion farmers and laborers over educated professionals and the wealthy; Democratic; opposed to the Cherokees; Andrew Jackson the first Appalachian President; tend to favor emotional forms of Christianity that emphasize individual over communal salvation.

Chapter Eighteen: Deep South: pp. 200-207: shift from tobacco to cotton gave Deep South advantages over Tidewater; demand for cotton greatly increased demand for slaves; Deep Southerners admired oligarchies of Ancient Greece and Rome; expanded from the Carolinas into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, northern Florida and Louisiana, as well as to parts of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas; celebrated slavery rather than just defended it; saw themselves as Normans rather than Anglo-Saxons; resisted French creole culture; had little where else to go in the USA by 1850 so began to eye expansion to the South.

Chapter Nineteen, “Conquering El Norte,” pp. 208-215: Breakdown of order within Mexico after its independence in 1821 makes El Norte look across its border with the United States for trade, supplies and settlers; wave of immigrants from the United States crosses into El Norte, and Mexico legalizes this immigration; subsequent American immigration is more problematic and Mexico tries to re-ban it; El Norte’s individualism, commercialism and reformism leads it to resist Mexican dictator Santa Anna; Texas Revolution of 1836 sees the Deep South fighting the Mexicans, led by Greater Appalachian slave owner Sam Houston; Texas annexation to the USA in 1845 by joint Congressional Revolution rather than by Treaty, with Yankeedom and the Midlands voting against it and Appalachia, Tidewater, New Netherland and the Deep South in favor; Mexico refuses to recognize the annexation and disputes the border, leading to the outbreak of the US-Mexican War in 1846; US wins despite intense opposition of Yankeedom; result of the 1848 and 1853 treaties with Mexico is the division of El Norte between the two countries; US also obtains large tracts of unassimilated Mexican territory that become foundations for Left Coast and Far West

Chapter Twenty, “Founding the Left Coast,” pp. 216-223: coastal strip of West Coast was first colonized by New Englanders who arrived by sea; shipbourne fur traders brought the Pacific Coast to Yankeedom’s attention; by 1830’s Lyman Beecher led movement to send Yankeedom into the Left Coast to fight the Catholic influences of French fur traders and Spanish settlers of California; however, the influence of the New Englanders was offset by Appalachians arriving via the Oregon Trail and non-Anglo immigrants arriving after the Civil War; Monterey became the southern limit to the Left Coast’s spread down coastal California, while the Gold Rush of 1849 brought Appalachians into the Bay Area and the California interior; Immigrants later added to the left coastal mix in California in the same way they did farther north; result was that Left Coast culture consisted of a Yankee elite with an Appalachian and immigrant majority, meaning a culture described as “idealistic individualism.”

Chapter Twenty-One: p. 224, The Civil War from the perspective of the various American nations: Deep South and Tidewater fought against Yankeedom, with the remaining nations torn between the two and at first anxious to stay neutral; there was a possibility four confederations could have emerged from the war; p. 225, Deep South was winning the competition to control the nation until about 1850, but by 1860 the Deep South and Tidewater had concluded that the other nations had developed the demographic and economic strength to control federal institutions and policy without them, so the Southern coalition decided it must leave the Union; pp. 226-227, Yankeedom’s combination of abolitionism and determination to use force to save the Union; pp. 227-229, summary of pro-slavery Southern thought; pp. 229-231, early ambivalence of the swing regions until the attack on Fort Sumter; pp. 231-232, New Netherland and the war; pp. 232-234, Midlands and the war; pp. 234-235, Tidewater and the war; pp. 235-238, Greater Appalachia and the war; pp. 238-239, resistance of the South to occupation and reform after the war.

Chapter Twenty Two, “Founding the Far West:” pp. 243-244, settlers interested in the Far West chose the corporate industrial method than the Native American method for penetrating the West; p. 244, environment trumped cultural heritage in this region, and the area became an internal colony of the older nations and the federal government; p. 245, the Mormons as the exception, and their Yankeedom traits; pp. 245-247, developments in California and Nevada regarding mining interests after the 1849 Gold Rush; pp. 247-248, power of the railroads; pp. 248-249, John Wesley Powell opposes fraudulent railroad advertising about the desirability of Western lands; p. 249, blizzard and drought ends fantasies about the West by 1890; pp. 249-253, summary of Far Western society, economics and politics since the end of the nineteenth century.

Chapter Twenty-Three, “Immigration and Identity:” pp. 254-260, summary of the failure of immigrants to dissolve the old regional cultures, which they either learn to operate by the old rules or react against; pp. 260-261, the Huntington thesis and Woodard’s personal reaction to it; pp. 262-262, Woodard and current developments in El Norte: it is in the process of trying to break away from both the US and Mexico to found its own independent state.

Chapter Twenty-Four: pp. 263-264, post-Civil War cultural conflict between a Midlander-New Netherland-Yankeedom coalition versus a Deep South-Tidewater-Greater Appalachia coalition; p. 264, emergence of the South as a distinct entity followed the Civil War; p. 265, myth of the Lost Cause; pp. 265-267, failure of Reconstruction; pp. 267-271, Northern coalition and the social reform movement; pp. 271-273, Social Gospel versus Christian fundamentalism

Chapter Twenty-Five: p. 274, the late 1950’s and 1960’s sees an internal cultural war within each cultural block of the US: the Dixie bloc has an African American uprising against segregation and the caste system, while the Northern alliance has a youth led cultural uprising; in the first case the Northern Alliance intervened in the South to force a settlement favorable to African Americans; Dixie block later recouped and began trying to undo much of the work of the youth movement; overall effect has been to widen gap between the two blocks and reduce chances of compromise and mutually agreeable solutions in 21st century America; pp. 274-275, title “Second Reconstruction” for the civil rights movement is appropriate because like the first Reconstruction it involved fundamental change in the South forced by a Yankee and Midlands dominated federal government; p. 275, outline of southern caste system circa 1955, with stress on how it forced, often violently, both whites and blacks to conform to its norms; pp. 275-276, outline of the key participants in the Civil Rights movement; p. 276, initial disbelief of white Southerners that African Americans would revolt was followed first by resistance and then by acceptance of some changes; pp. 277-278, uneven implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the various Southern nations; p. 278, resurgence of the white evangelical world review that resisted social reform and the lifting of cultural taboos; pp. 278-279, the founding components of the youth rebellion in the North were Yankee utopianism, New Netherlands intellectual freedom and Midlands tolerant pacifism; p. 279, the youth sought to break down traditional institutions and social taboos that the Dixie block cherished; p. 279, Port Huron document as the founding manifesto; p. 279, Left Coast also becomes a center of the youth movement through hippies in San Francisco and the Free Speech movement in Berkeley; p. 280, rebellion of nortenos in El Norte challenges white supremacy in southern California and south Texas; pp. 280-281, New France sees the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, its near separation from Canada, a question which remains open; pp. 281-283, environmental movement also originates in northern nations and finds resistance in the southern ones; p. 283, similar divide opens on issues like the ERA and gay marriage; pp. 283-284, the divide over corporate behavior.

Chapter Twenty-Six: p. 285, chapter begins with contrast between two regional coalitions and their traditional thinking about war, with the northern alliance skeptical and the Dixie block traditionally supportive of armed conflicts; pp. 285-286, initial unanimity of support for the Spanish American War gave way to debate when the question of how to handle the conquered territories began; p. 286, anti-imperialism of Yankeedom; pp. 286-287, Dixie bloc willing to fight but not comfortable with annexation of people of color, also nervous about military occupations based on its harsh memory of Reconstruction; pp. 287-289, World War I, Dixie-bloc President Wilson and his intolerance of antiwar dissent, and Yankee and Left Coast Opposition; pp. 289, Dixie bloc ignored Hitler’s affinity with their racism to support preparation for World War II, while New Netherland was hawkish due to Hitler ‘s persecution of Jews and Left Coast, Far West and El Norte followed the New Netherland lead; p. 290, Midlanders opposed intervention under German American influence; Yankeedom divided between interventionists in New England and isolationists in the Great Lakes-Midwest region; p. 290, after Pearl Harbor they all support World War II but with different motives for each nation; pp. 290-291, material benefits to Far West and El Norte from that conflict; pp. 291-293, how the regions divided over the Vietnam War, with special focus on the ambivalence of Midlands; pp. 293-294, the war in Iraq.

WOODARD, CHAPTERS TWENTY SEVEN, TWENTY EIGHT AND EPILOGUE:

p. 295, since Reconstruction no one nation has been able to dominate US politics and coalitions have been necessary; p. 295, most enduring coalition has been between Yankeedom and the Left Coast, with the Left Coast contributing environmentalism and technological innovation to the mix; pp. 295-296, this coalition dominated the federal government from 1977 to 1897 with assistance from Midlands and the Far West; p. 296, under the leadership of Lodge it proposed the Force Bill of 1890 which called for federal intervention in disputed presidential elections, but New Netherland joined the Dixie coalition to defeat the bill; pp. 296-297, transformation of New Netherland from an occasional ally of Dixie in the nineteenth century to the third member of the Northern coalition; p. 297, today the northern coalition favors strong central government, federal checks on corporate power and the conservation of environmental resources; p. 297-298, summary of the Republican party record during its period of northern domination between the Civil War and the Great Depression; pp. 298-299, summary of recent Northern alliance presidencies: JFK, Ford, Bush I, and Obama and their quarrels with the Southern alliance; pp. 299-301, transformation of the Republicans into a Dixie-led party; p. 301, passage of the Obama health care overhaul of 2010 reflected Northern alliance cohesion; pp. 302-303, instability of the Southern coalition with the difficulty of keeping Greater Appalachia in the fold and the tendency of Tidewater to be attracted to Midland ways; pp. 303-304, use of race and religion by Deep South oligarchs has been effective in holding the coalition together; p. 305, Wilson as a Southern figure, combining racism and intolerance of political dissent with resent of northern corporate power; pp. 305-306, impact of Civil Rights policies of LBJ on the South’s attitude toward the Democrats, and role of El Norte Anglos Nixon and Reagan in overthrowing Northern alliance control of the Republican Party; pp. 306-308, Dixie influence on the federal government since the Nixon era and especially since the 1990’s; pp. 308-311, Midlands, El Norte and the Far West as today’s swing nations: Midlands genuinely middle of the road, Far West desiring to escape Northern alliance domination while keeping federal subsidies, and El Norte demanding respect and recognition; pp. 310-311, Woodard sees El Norte as increasingly drawn toward the northern alliance because of the Dixie coalition ‘s commitment to white supremacy; pp. 311-313, contemporary multicultural Canada as an example of what the US might be like without the Dixie block; pp. 314-316, analysis of current weaknesses in the American, Canadian and Mexican federations; 16-318, various breakdown scenarios for the USA, with Woodard’s view of the minimum that must be done if the nation is to stay together: keep separation of church and state, have an open-minded Justice Department and Supreme Court, allow everyone to vote, have open debate in Congress, have a clean open and efficient central government; pp. 319-322, survey of the re-emergence of First Nations in Alaska, the North of Canada and Greenland provides a chance to consider what society in North America would have been like had none of the other regional nations ever developed on this continent.