Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996
From: Seppo K J Tamminen
Subject: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
I am making this question from Finland. The reason I do this is that during the 1990's most Finns have started to call Americans as Yankees - Jenkki in Finnish. I know that in many other European countries people have done it, too. I'd like to hear how people in the H-SOUTH understand who is a Yankee, and how Southerners feel when they are called (insulted) that way. I know this quite well myself, but I need some good quotations from you all, when I argue with people here why the Olympics this summer are not in the Yankeeland (Jenkkila or Jenkeissa in Finnish), or should I use W. J. Cash's term, Yankeedom.
Telling people about the Civil War and how the Yankees under Sherman destroyed Atlanta does not seem to matter to Finns, nor does the Rebel Flag in Georgia state flag. By-the-way, the Rebel Flag has also been called a Jenkki-flag, and local ice hockey club in Helsinki, HIFK, made their own flag imitating the Rebel Flag two years ago. What do you think about this? When Finnish TV commentators come to Atlanta within a month or so, I am sure that they use the term Jenkki more often that United States, or America.
So, let me know how you Southerners and also Non-Southerners think about this. And do Southerners really care how they are called outside United States. My counter argument to many Finns is, how they would think if Americans would call us Russians.
Seppo Tamminen
Assistant for North American Studies
Renvall Institute
University of Helsinki
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996
From: Eugene Berwanger
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Although the term "Yankee" has come to be applied to Northerners, it was originally a reference to New Englanders. Southerners are not Yankees, and most of them would insulted if called one.
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996
From: Carol Vaughn
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Dear Seppo:
Nice of you to ask!
Southerners are Americans, but not Yankees. We may realize that the rest of the world identifies Americans as "Yanks," but you are right that Americans recognize a difference between those who may be "Yankees" and those who are not (Southerners).
Since you mentioned ice hockey . . .
The Stanley Cup just experienced an interesting phenom. when Florida's team went to the finals. This is a good example of what many Southerners view as a "Yankee influence." Since so many Northerners migrate to Florida seasonally and permanently, it stands to reason that a "Yankee sport" (called this since few Southern states have the ice required to make it an indigenous sport) would develop a presence in an area with a lot of "Yankees." Most of the ice in the South is made in freezers and put in tall glasses of tea.
This same process occurred a decade ago in Huntsville, Alabama, when the "Yankees" --as many proudly called themselves--invaded the city to work for high-tech industries and NASA and formed a club to sponsor an ice hockey team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. This was acceptable to the University of Alabama Board of Trustees who realized that ice hockey would hardly rival football at the main campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
I was once chastised by another Southerner for referring to the hockey players and their initial supporters at UAH as "Yankees." The person thought I meant it in a derogatory way. But I used the word as the they applied it to themselves. Since almost all of the hockey players are recruited from Michigan and Canada, their ideas about Alabama make them proud to be Yankees. Once here, however, 95% of the ice hockey players in Huntsville remain in the South because they like Southerners (they do not call us "Rebels"; they say "Southern" unless they are joking). Hence they become "transplants."
Ice hockey is not common in most of the South, certainly not at the local little league level; but it is not as rare as many might think, especially in the larger cities. Minor League teams are spreading rapidly. Local sportscasters are commenting on the surge in Southerners' interest in the "Yankee sport." UAH has even managed to create a Southern "homecoming court" for ice hockey games.
All of this is, I guess, a comment on the New New South (since World War II).
I do know that veterans of World War II thought it was funny that Europeans called them Yanks. Some were offended, but most just found it humorous.
As for the rebel flag, it is now a divisive symbol rather than a unifying one. But I'll leave that issue for others to take up . . .
Good luck!
Carol Ann Vaughn
PhD student, Auburn University, Alabama
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: James Miller
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
<<-- From: Carol A Vaughn
I was once chastised by another Southerner for referring to the hockey players and their initial supporters at UAH as "Yankees." The person thought I meant it in a derogatory way. But I used the word as the they applied it to themselves. Since almost all of the hockey players are recruited from Michigan and Canada, their ideas about Alabama make them proud to be Yankees.-->>
Dear Carol Ann: Greetings from the other side of the world's longest undefended (militarily at least) border. I haven't lived her very long, but I strongly suspect that if I went around calling the locals "Yankees" I'd be inviting myself to a sampling of that darned "socialized medicine" they have up here. As a good Southerner, I'm sure you wouldn't wish that on anyone :-) The idea that hockey is a "Yankee" sport might be especially galling at the moment since Winnipeg's hockey team has recently changed into the Phoenix Coyotes. By the way it's probably easier to find a Canadian on the Blue Jays than it is to find a Yankee (Finnish or Southern definition) on either the Florida Panthers or the Colorado Avalanche (ne Quebec Nordiques).
As the writer Albert Murray said long ago (in the OmniAmericans, I think) - No matter how different Americans think they are from each other they are a lot more like each other than they are like anyone else. Or words to that effect. He was probably talking about black and white Americans but the same probably applies to "Yankees" and "Rebels" (at least when it comes to their grasp of world geography. Just kidding y'all.
James Miller
Emory University
Happy to be living where a Cuban cigar is still sometimes just a Cuban cigar.
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: Joel Sipress
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
It is important to keep in mind that all terms of identity are defined by context. Yankee can mean one thing in one context and another thing in another context.
In Latin America, for example, Yankee applies to all those from the United States. The term Yankee gained broad currency in Latin America through its use in anti-imperialist rhetoric (as in "Yankee Go Home!"). I would suggest that in a Latin American context, a white southerner is, in fact, a "Yankee."
When used in Alabama or North Carolina, "Yankee" means either a non-southerner or a northeasterner. I have heard both usages.
So if Finlanders want to use the term Yankee to describe all Americans (and in this context, "American" means someone from the United States-- a usage that many Latin Americans find quite offensive), there is little anyone can do to stop them. Given that no derogatory intent is intended or suggested, I would hope that Southerners would not take offense.
(Written, by the way, by "Yankee" who lived for seven years in North Carolina and very much enjoyed it.)
Joel Sipress
University of Wisconsin-Superior
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: Gene Preuss
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
<<--From: Seppo K J Tamminen
Can a Southerner be a Yankee? I'd like to hear how people in the H-SOUTH understand who is a Yankee, and how Southerners feel when they are called (insulted) that way.-->>
As I understand it, Yankee means a northerner, so to Latin Americans anyone from the North (esp. North American, or the United States) is a Yankee. So, although US Marines who, say, invade Nicaragua might be from Alabama, to the opressed Nicaraguan they would be Yankee imperialists. It seems that "Yankee" is, therefore a relative term.
Gene Preuss
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: John Bell
Subject: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
<<--Seppo K J Tamminen wrote:
I'd like to hear how people in the H-SOUTH understand who is a Yankee-->>
As a Bostonian, I think "Yankee" is a relative term; few people whom others call Yankees apply the term to themselves. To Southerners people from the northeastern USA are Yankees. To Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers, people from the northeastern USA are Yankees. To Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers, people from New England are Yankees. To citizens of Connecticut and Massachusetts, folks from New Hampshire and Maine are Yankees. And to people from those corner states, only folks who don't pronounce their R's and do their own canning are true Yankees.
Therefore, it makes sense that foreigners see all Americans, even Atlantans, as Yanks, and that Atlantans reject that label. The only thing about Yankees on which nearly all Americans can agree is disliking the kind from the Bronx.
John Bell
Editor, General Books Division
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996
From: Robert Comeaux
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Yes, most Southerners are insulted by the term Yankee. However, often "transplants" will comment that they are Southern by choice, my brother-in-law refers to himself this way. As far as Ice Hockey is concerned, I live in Lafayette Louisiana. This city is home to the Louisiana IceGators and broke most attendence records in their division. It was hard to get tickets because they were sold out most of the time.
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996
From: Thomas J. Benthall
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Of course Southerners can ba yankees. I once knew a person who moved to Norfolk, Va., from Carolina. He stayed two weeks and when he got back home, I couldn't understand a damn thing he said.
Thomas J. Benthall
Gen. Matt W. Ransom Camp 861, SCV
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996
From: Gregg Kimball
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Because this is a history list, I thought I might insert a perspective on the notion of "Yankees" from an earlier era. I refer to Daniel R. Hundley's book Social Relations in our Southern States (1860). LSU reprinted this work in 1979 with an introduction by William J. Cooper, Jr. I don't have the work in front of me, but as I remember, Hundley was from Alabama, attended UVA and then Harvard. I think he also practiced law in Chicago before the War (you know which one). Hundley broke southern society into numerous classes, no doubt reacting, as historians would years later, against the simplistic view of the southern social order current in the antebellum north. Hundley maintained that there were "southern yankees," defined not by birth in a region, but by their avaricious behavior. Not surprisingly, slave traders often fell into this category. Likewise, he recognized that there were some northerners (perhaps Boston Brahmins?) who were just as aristocratic, traditional, and refined as the most venerable of southern gentlemen. Hundley recognized that "Yankee" and "southern gentleman" were more than just regional identifications. These terms involved sets of behaviors and beliefs. I guess Hundley might recognize "honorary Southerners"--if they acted right.
Gregg D. Kimball Phone: 804-786-2312 Assistant Director of Publications Fax: 804-786-7250 Division of Publications and E-mail: gkimball@leo.vsla.edu Cultural Affairs Library of Virginia 11th Street at Capitol Square Richmond, VA 23219-3491
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996
From: H-Pol Editor Rob Forbes
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Joel Sipress correctly points out: >In Latin America, for example, Yankee applies to all those from the
>United States. The term Yankee gained broad currency in Latin
>America through its use in anti-imperialist rhetoric (as in "Yankee
>Go Home!"). I would suggest that in a Latin American context, a
>white southerner is, in fact, a "Yankee."
This reminds me of an old Dave Berg's "Lighter Side of..." bit in Mad Magazine from the early '60s in which a Latin American tour guide is apologizing with chagrin to his American tour gruop for a wall scrawled with the message, "Yanqui Go Home"--to which they jovially reply, "We don't take no offense at all; ya see, we-all are from the South!"
In my own research, I work a good bit with antebellum Southerners traveling abroad. When the young Southrons William Campbell Preston and Hugh S. Legare went to visit the Irish novelist Lady Morgan whlie on their grand tour, they sought to correct her when she addressed them as Yankees, explaining that the expression did not apply to them. Lady Morgan derisively explained to the chastened cavaliers that in the eyes of the rest of the world, all Americans are Yankees, all tarred with the same brush of national characteristics and reputation. It was an educational experience which Legare, at least, never forgot.
Of course, dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders learned a parallel lesson when traveling abroad, discovering that however refined and delicate their humanitarians sensibilities, and however unstained they felt themselves to be with the taint of slavery, Europeans held them to a common standard with their Southern countrymen, and demanded to know why they permitted the institution to thrive unchecked with the protection, if not the outright sponsorship, of the federal government.
What all this shows is that regional and national identity is in large degree a function of perspective. Those of the students in my seminar, "Travelers in the Early United States," who have traveled abroad, almost universally report that it was only then that they became truly conscious of being "American." Similarly, my Southern students say they never thought of themselves as "Southern" until they came up North. Then they figured it out fast.
Robert P. Forbes
Department of History
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel.: (203)432-0714
Fax: (203)773-9777
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996
From: Chris Morris
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
The relationship between travel and national identity is an interesting one. One might ask Can a Southerner really be a Southerner until he or she has travelled to the North? Do Southerners, Northerners, Westerners become Americans only when they travel abroad? Of course, regional and national identity can be established without venturing far beyond one's backyard, especially in this age of electronic telecommunication. But nothing shapes self identity like first hand encounters with imagined others.
I'm working on a project about antebellum Americans who traversed the border of slavery and in so doing "discovered" they were Northerners or Southerners. Travel journals and hotel records indicate most Southernes who went to the North went to Philadelphia and especially New York. Thus their idea of a "Northerner" was a New Yorker, a very different person from a Michigander. Northerners who went South went to Charleston, New Orleans, but most often the border region, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia--not exactly Mississippi or Georgia--and their image of the South and of Southerners was shaped accordingly. And of course where they went and what they saw made them think about where they were from and who and what they themselves were.
This is a new project, and in light of the current thread I thought I would ask you all for thoughts and suggestions.
I should add, my own experiences as a Canadian who lives in the U.S. has shaped my thinking here.
One final anecdote: When I first went on a research trip to Mississippi I noticed people in county archives and courthouses were a little cold until I happened to mention I was Canadian. A Canadian! they would say, well come on in. Why, we thought you were a Yankee! I quickly learned to mention I was Canadian almost before I said my name.
Chris Morris
University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996
From: David L. Carlton
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
<<--From: H-Pol Editor Rob Forbes
Similarly, my Southern students say they never thought of themselves as "Southern" until they came up North. Then they figured it out fast.-->>
This one-time southern student expatriate can vouch for that; Amherst made me a southern historian. Thanks for a most illuminating posting on this topic.
David L. Carlton Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
P.O. Box 1523, Sta. B, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37235 (615) 322-3326
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996
From: Michael Gagnon
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
I've heard my father retell a story he heard when my family first moved South from the mid-West in the 1960s about the difference between Yankees and Damnyankees. Yankees, he was told in 1966, were the snowbirds who came south during the winter, spent their money and returned home. Damnyankees (one word), came South and stayed. My dad usually tells the story with a grin since we came South, stayed, and universally consider ourselves Southerners.
When I once retold the story to a now retired historian acquaintance, he told me that my family members were "Galvinized Yankees". Apparently a man named Galvin recruited Northern prisoners-of-war (many of whom were Irish immigrants who simply preferred being out of prison and didn't really care to join the fray on either side) to fight for the South ("you know which war") and the term applied to them. Thus in his upbringing, he learned that anyone who came South from elsewhere and adopted the South as their home was "galvinized".
So, yes, Southerners, under certain conditions, can be considered "Yankees" of sorts without necessarily implying any sort of insult. A "Galvinized Yankee" is a Southerner as much as one born and bred in the South. If anything, the term seems to me to be used to identify unSouthern sounding (and/or acting) people as included and accepted as Southerners.
Michael Gagnon
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996
From: H-Pol Editor Rob Forbes
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
<<-- Michael J. Gagnon wrote:
When I once retold the story to a now retired historian acquaintance, he told me that my family members were "Galvinized Yankees". Apparently a man named Galvin recruited Northern prisoners-of-war (many of whom were Irish immigrants who simply preferred being out of prison and didn't really care to join the fray on either side) to fight for the South ("you know which war") and the term applied to them.-->>
This anecdote really does prove the point about the relativism of Yankee-ness: far enough South, even Irishmen can be Yankees!
Rob Forbes
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996
From: Gregg Kimball
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Chris,
I am finishing up (I hope this fall) a dissertation along the same lines, but with a narrower focus. I am looking at how Richmond was influenced by its contacts with other cultural and economic spheres in the world of the 1850s, as well as its relationship to its hinterland. As a commercial city in the Upper South, Richmond obviously had political and economic ties that created conflicting feelings, especially among merchants and manufacturers. But there are other lesser know linkages that are equally interesting, such as the connection to the California Gold Rush, and the migration of African Americans to and from the city. Obviously, the possible connections I could have studied were endless. As we all must do, I went where the records were and wrote chapters that are essentially case studies. I covered militias and their interchanges, mostly with northerners, using newspapers and company records; African American migration and contact with the world through letters and the minutes of the First African Baptist Church; merchants, primarily through letters home and newspapers; The Tredegar Iron Works, which was a strange nexus of northern and slave workers (often hired from the countryside), as well as a business that actively promoted selling to the South while also making arms for the feds, using extensive company records; the Gold Rush; and a weird Civil War chapter on those who resisted the Confederacy, among them native white Unionists, northerners living in Richmond, immigrants, and African Americans. There is also an urban-rural chapter that lays out Richmond's connections to the rest of Virginia.
I would be very interested in further discussions with you about this project, as well as with anyone else on H-South that has sources or opinions--just realize I may save them for the publication I hope will come out of this!
Gregg D. Kimball Phone: 804-786-2312 Assistant Director of Publications Fax: 804-786-7250 Division of Publications and Cultural Affairs Library of Virginia 11th Street at Capitol Square Richmond, VA 23219-3491
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996
From: Tom Powers
Subject: Re[2]: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
Many years ago, I read a short item in the _Readers' Digest_ about the "vanishing American:" the Yankee. It went something like this:
To the rest of the world, a Yankee is a citizen of the U.S.
To U.S. citizens, particularly southerners, a Yankee is someone from the Northern, Midwestern, or Western part of the country.
To Northern citizens, a Yankee is someone from New England.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is someone from Vermont.
To Vermonters, a Yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast.
It seems that no one wants to _be_ a Yankee, except, perhaps, fans of old baseball movies.
Tom Powers
Professor of History
The University of South Carolina at Sumter
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996
From: Joe Bauman
Subject: Re: Can a Southerner be a Yankee?
A thought that occurs to me is that you might want to research the daguerreotypes taken of blacks in Richmond. I once owned one that I sold to a collector named Jackie Napoleon Wilson (I seem to recall) that looked like two free blacks. They stood together, one with his arm around his friend. This was by an identified daguerreotypist in Richmond. Maybe you could track down Wilson and get him to copy it so you could reproduce it in your book. They are well-dressed black men, which goes against the stereotype whether they are free or slaves, I think. Just a thought -- Joe Bauman
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996
From: Chris Morris
Greg: Your work sounds very interesting and I look forward to reading it. One quick question: What sort of connections did Richmond have to the rest of the South. I have found that connections between, say, Charlestonians and Natchezians were almost nonexistent, and those that did exist were formed in Philadelphia and New York. South Carolinians vacationing at such places as Saratoga Springs mentioned in letters the arrival of parties from Natchez, but did not seem to socialize with them any more than they did with New Yorkers. It is ironic that at least some southerners encountered one another, and perhaps as a consequence concluded they were indeed southern, while on northern soil. I wonder if White Sulphur Springs, a popular resort for Richmonders, worked to bring southerners and northerners together?
Chris Morris
UT-Arlington
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996
From: Gregg Kimball
Chris,
The question of Richmond's connections to the rest of the South is a good one. Probably the largest economic connection was the domestic slave trade. Richmond was a major hub of this system. I address the slave trade in several chapters, but more its cultural implications than economic-- Michael Tadman has done a very good job of that. Certainly in the chapter on African American life I discuss the tenuous connections retained between Richmonders and the rest of the South, mainly church members moving between urban centers, and a few letters I have found. The springs of Virginia are definitely meeting places for northerners and southerners. A fellow UVA student has been working on a dissertation regarding the springs.
Right now their are two chapters which describe southern connections directly. The first chapter looks at Richmond as a hub of economic and cultural ties to the rest of Virginia and parts of the upper South (mostly North Carolina), including slave hiring, the expansion of railroads and the James River and Kanawha Canal (which in turn spreads tobacco culture and slavery), and Richmond as a symbolic political and religious center. As Noe argued in his recent book on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the rise of industry and modern transportation may reinforce and buttress a supposedly "pre-modern" social and labor system.
A later chapter discusses the Tredegar Iron Works. As a major producer of railroad products, Tredegar was key to the belated expansion of southern lines. The master of Tredegar, Joseph Reid Anderson, explicitly turned to the southern market in the 1850s, partly because he couldn't compete with northern- and British-made products in the north. He also prompted one of the first southern strikes in 1847 by asking skilled white workers (mostly British or northern) to train slaves for skilled jobs in the rolling and puddling mills.
One of the issues I might look at after I finish the dissertation is education, which certainly would involve some southern and northern schools. I generally agree with your premise that the South was not as "connected" as the north. I like the second chapter of Freehling's "Road to Disunion" as a realistic look at travel through the antebellum South. But look at a typical southern newspaper and you will see notices and articles from a broad variety of southern and northern newspapers, so we have to be careful about these generalizations.
Gregg D. Kimball Phone: 804-786-2312 Assistant Director of Publications Fax: 804-786-7250 Division of Publications and E-mail: gkimball@leo.vsla.edu Cultural Affairs, Library of Virginia 11th Street at Capitol Square Richmond, VA 23219-3491
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996
From: Joan Browning
Re: Whether White Sulphur Springs brought northerners and southerners together: Yes. Also , the other baker's dozen of springs resorts in the Virginias.
Joan Browning
Ronceverte WV
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996
From: Paul Gaston
When did Europeans and others from afar begin to use "Yank" as a term interchangeable with "American"? Was it during World War I?
Paul M. Gaston
University of Virginia
Home: 810 Rugby Rd.
Charlottesville, VA 22903
ph: (804) 296-9089
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