American Yankee

“ In short, in the north-east you have the cool, calculating, confident, and persevering Yankee; in the south, the fiery, somewhat aristocratic, bold, and uncompromising American, full of talent, but with his energies a little slackened by his proximity to the equator and his habitual use of slave assistance.
In the central States, all is progressive; a more agricultural population of mixed races, as energetic as the Yankee, but not possessing his advantages of a seaboard. ”

“ Yankee Love is fitful, uncertain, changeful, passional, moody, seldom more than superficial, because the Yankee faculties are all engrossed in the one grand object of American life—dollars and dimes, dash and display. ”

“ And so merrily we'll push about the brandy, oh!
John Bull may toast his fill,
But let the world say what they will,
The Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, oh!
[Pg 118]
THE "UNITED STATES" AND "MACEDONIAN." (Action 25 of October, 1812.)
How glows each patriot bosom that boasts a Yankee heart,
To emulate such glorious deeds and nobly take a part;
When sailors with their thund'ring guns,
Prove to the English, French, and Danes
That Neptune's chosen fav'rite sons
Are brave Yankees boys. ”

“ On all questions affecting public education, social morality, health, and recreation, as well as business or industry, the American portion of the community was very apt to mass behind Yankee leadership; and the English speaking section of the foreign population was not averse to doing the same, at least under ordinary circumstances. Often, indeed, such was the prestige of the Yankees, their initiative was followed unquestioningly by American and foreigner alike. ”

“ Eminently a pioneer, the American who [Pg 286] is not more or less Europeanised, the pure Yankee in a word, is not only a working man, but he is a migratory one. He has no root in the soil, he has no feeling of reverence and love for the natal spot and the paternal roof; he is always disposed to emigrate, always ready to start in the first steamer that comes along, from the place where he had but just now landed. He is devoured with a passion for locomotion, he cannot stay in one place; he must go and come, he must stretch his limbs and keep his muscles in play. ”

“ I must venture upon some description, my dear sister, as our ideas of the Yankee race in England are very unlike the realities which we see before us in this country. I remember hearing a wealthy, respectable, foolish, ignorant woman, of a class such as frequently forces its way into society with us at home, deliberately ask an American, whom she knew to be such, whether all the natives of America were salmon-coloured. ”

“ As the tide of emigration from the northeastern states rose higher, it bore along a goodly number who were not of the old American stock, particularly English and Irish, with some Scotch and Germans. Yet, many of these were natives of the states named and, if foreign born, had enjoyed so long an apprenticeship to the Yankee system of life as to enable them faithfully to represent it. ”

“ His personation of the rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality and delicacy. ”

“ In comparison with them, the European has been only the eleventh-hour-man, the apprentice, the hireling. The fusion of the European with the Yankee takes place but slowly, even on the new soil of the West; for the Yankee is not a man of promiscuous society; he believes that Adam's oldest son was a Yankee. Enough, however, of foreign blood has been mingled with the [Pg 114] Yankee blood to modify the primitive character of the New England race, and to form a third American type, that of the West, whose features are not yet sharply defined, but are daily assuming more distinctness ”

“ Yankee Doodle American philologists have endeavored to trace the term Yankee to an Indian source. It is not Indian, however, but Dutch. If one might characterize the relations between New England and the New Netherlands in the early colonial period, he would say with Irving that “the Yankee despised the Dutchman and the Dutchman abominated the Yankee.” The Dutch verb “Yankee” means to snarl, wrangle, and the noun “Yanker,” howling cur, is perhaps the most expressive term of contempt in the whole language. ”

“ The men of South Carolina were among the bravest and most loyal of the defenders of our liberties. And when America's enemies called American men 'Yankees' they meant General Washington and every other American who was ready to defend the United States of America. So if any of your friends use the word 'Yankee' scornfully they agree with the enemies of the Union. No one need be ashamed of being called a 'Yankee.' It means someone who is ready to fight for what is right. ”

“ Nor will they have any of the vulgar admiration of success which makes the American parvenu cringe to the Englishman of rank or station, until the Yankee to-day is more despised in Great Britain than his independent father was ever hated there—which is saying a good deal. ”

“ But England's guns will thunder along the Yankee coast,
And show the abolitionists too soon they made their boast.
Then while Old England's cannon are booming on the sea,
Our Johnson, Smith, and Beauregard dear Maryland will free,
And Johnston in Kentucky will whip the Yankees too,
And start them to the lively tune of "Yankee-doodle-doo."
Then down at Pensacola, where the game is always "Bragg,"
The "Stars and Stripes" will be pulled down and in the dust be dragged ”

“ The Vicksburg Herald strikes another note on the gamut and illustrates a change of sentiment on this wise, in response to a narrow-minded, complaining correspondent: “We are heartily in favor of the South from the Potomac to the Rio Grande being thoroughly and permanently Yankeeized. Yankee energy, Yankee schools, Yankee cultivation, Yankee railroads and Yankee capital are badly needed in the South, and will be welcomed by every Southern progressive patriot.” ”

“ Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston, 1839) , chap. x, 112-113, 117, says: “Loading a wagon with a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, the indispensable supply of tea and molasses, a Bible and a wife, and with his axe on his shoulder, the Yankee sets out for the West, without a servant, without an assistant, often without a companion, to build himself a log hut, six hundred miles from his father’s roof, and clear away a spot for a farm in the midst of the boundless forest.... He is incomparable as a pioneer, unequalled as a settler of the wilderness.” ”

“ The Yankees have plundered us with their custom-houses and duties long enough.” An old gentleman here stopped us. “You will do me the greatest favour,” he said to one of our party who knew him, “if you will get me something to do for our glorious cause. Old as I am, I can carry a musket—not far, to be sure, but I can kill a Yankee if he comes near.” When he had gone, my friend told me the speaker was a man of fortune, two of whose sons were in camp at Morris’ Island, but that he was suspected of Union sentiments, as he had a Northern wife, and hence his extreme vehemence and devotion. ”

“ He is the kind of man generally represented in our types of a “Yankee”—tall, lean, straight-haired, angular, with fiery, impulsive eyes and manner—a ruminator of tobacco and a profuse spitter—a lawyer, I believe, certainly not a soldier; ardent, devoted to the cause, and confident to the last degree of its speedy success.
The news that two more States had joined the Confederacy, making ten in all, was enough to put them in good humour. “Is it not too bad these Yankees will not let us go our own way, and keep their cursed Union to themselves? ”

“ New England Yankees are not always so filled with the Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means of money-making. Even the Massachusetts common schools and prim Connecticut meeting-houses turn out their black sheep into the world. At Center Harbor, in New Hampshire, I met with an example of the “Yankee spawn” in a Maine man—a shrewd, sailor-looking fellow. ”

“ Persons who come to this country are very apt to confound the old settlers from Britain with the native Americans; and when they meet with people of rude, offensive manners, using certain Yankee words in their conversation, and making a display of independence, not exactly suitable to their own aristocratical notions, they immediately suppose they must be genuine Yankees, while they are, in fact, only imitators ”

“ This, it may be, is the typical Yankee, and without a doubt such can be found; but not every inhabitant of New England is made that way. Yankees are of all kinds, and the abilities, virtues, and short-comings are much mixed in the parcelling out. The Yankee is a man of opinions, and shows great readiness to impart them to others; but the depth or shallowness of these depends on the man. ”

“ The dry wit of the New England Yankee has done much to cheer the Lonely Traveler on his way. It has oiled the thinking machinery when it creaked and provided inspiration for that spontaneous good fellowship which helps so much to make life worth living. ”

“ Go he must, and if necessary, with the bloodhounds on his track. The scum of Europe and the mudsills of Yankeedom shall never be permitted to advance a step [Pg 30] south of 36° 30′. South of that latitude is ours—westward to the Pacific. With my heart of hearts I hate a Yankee, and I will make my children swear eternal hatred to the whole Yankee race. A mongrel breed—Irish, Dutch, Puritans, Jews, free niggers, &c.—they scarce deserve the notice of the descendants of the Huguenots, the old Castilians, and the Cavaliers. ”

“ The Yankee is the laborious ant; he is industrious and sober and, on the sterile soil of New England, niggardly; transplanted to the promised land in the west he continues moderate in his habits, but less inclined to count the cents. ”

“ While there are few who can surpass the typical New England Yankee as a natural shrewd trader, there are numerous residents of that section of Canadian-French, Irish or Italian ancestry, who are amply qualified to hold their own. ”

“ They are industrious, frugal, enterprising, regular in their habits, pure in their manners, and strongly impressed with sentiments of religion. The name Yankee, which we apply as one of reproach and derision to Americans in general, is assumed by them as their natural and appropriate designation. ”

“ A thorough Yankee—using that word as the English do, to indicate national, not sectional, character—is never satisfied with doing well; he always underrates his gains and his successes; and, though to others he may be boastful enough, and may, even truly, rate the profits of his enterprise by long strings of “naught,” he is always whispering to himself, “I ought to do better.” ”

“ Now, the Yankee was not a heavy man, but he was very strong and wiry, and, moreover, in his early days, like Abraham Lincoln, he had been the best wrestler in the Vermont village in which he was born. ”

“ So crops, and animals, and farm-tools are ill-protected, and there is increased loss.
A COUNTRY SCHOOL WATCHING A TEAM GO BY
AN OLD BURYING-GROUND
As compared with the typical Southerner, the Yankee has less warmth of enthusiasm, less open-heartedness and chivalry, but he is steadier and has greater staying-power. The ne’er-do-well class of the North may wear their hearts on their sleeves and be as free as air in their kindliness and generosity; but Yankee thrift, however generous or philanthropic, is self-controlled and inclined to be reticent and politic. ”

“ About the time that Yankees began to emigrate to Wisconsin a talented French writer, Michel Chevalier, gave the world a brilliant and on the whole favorable characterization of them. "The Yankee," he says, "is reserved, cautious, distrustful; he is thoughtful and pensive, but equable; his manners are without grace, modest but dignified, cold, and often unprepossessing; he is narrow in his ideas, but practical, and possessing the idea of the proper, he never rises to the grand. He has nothing chivalric about him and yet he is adventurous, and he loves a roving life. ”

“ They evidenced the orderly, religious habits of the sons of the Puritans; for, with all his hardness of manner and selfishness of purpose, I am inclined to think that the Yankee is the best manifestation of Northern character. He loves his home, at least, and he reveres his deceased comrades. ”

“ Father was so Yankee-hearted, When the Spanish war was started, He slipped on his uniform and hopped upon a pony. My mother's mother was a Yankee true, My father's father was a Yankee too: And that's going some, For the Yankees, by gum. ”

“ It is a common proverb in America, that a Yankee will live where another would starve. Their very prosperity, however, with a certain reserve in their character, and supposed steady attention to small gains, renders them not excessively popular with those among whom they settle. They are charged with a peculiar species of finesse, called 'Yankee tricks,' and the character of being 'up to every thing' is applied to them, we know not exactly how, in a sense of reproach. ”

“ Indeed Mexico was almost entirely Americanized. The great fondas and sociedads were all under the dominion of Yankees—with Yankee ice, Yankee drinks, signs, manners, habits, and customs, as if the city had been from time immemorial Yankeefied all over, instead of being only occupied a short twelvemonth by the troops. I usually dined in one of these large establishments, and excepting the hall of the eating saloon—from patios to attics—on every angle of the broad flights of stairs, crowded one beside the other, were gaming-tables of every kind and description. ”