#Yankee: an American or specifically an American from the North

[questionableadvice]

~ The Handbook of the Man of Fashion, by the author of “Etiquette for Gentlemen”, 1847

[captainlordauditor]

Poll

tag where you're from and what you voted, if you're american don't just say that please give ur region

[dragonheadskilax]

Books I have read this year thus far:

Dracula -- I finished Part 2 as I realized I haven't completed my read of it. The men in the book are kindly in various ways, I like that when it comes to reading old books and seeing how nice the men are. Compared to the next book on this list.

This Side of Paradise -- About observing a man you wouldn't wanna be in close ties with and it's viewed as almost theatrical. It's like watching how much worse can this guy get.

Hamlet -- It's nice to finally know what the overall story is about beyond past the two well known scenes.

A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Definetly deserves a reread as it's very humorous. These sorta stories are exactly like how me and Jim interpret plots in a way for the sake of the humor of it and taking place at a specific period, except that it's been written for real! Trains and newspaper invented at the time of castles and knights.

The Grapes of Wrath -- One of my longest reads so far. It really shows how it was like to live with nothing. The constant belief of telling oneself that one day, more money can be procurred and a house can be owned, is familiar to what I hear from my own family who came from far away throughout half my life.

Captain's Courageous -- A return to humor, I'd also want this one as a physical copy. I don't think I've read anything that included child characters, so as expected a lot of humor was around how the two boys were treated. One being a rich boy who's completely unfamiliar with physical labor and just had hundreds of dollars sitting in his pocket before falling overboard.

The Scarlet Letter -- The motivation to pick this one up was how I have been denied the opportunity to back in middle school. Due to the restrictions of my mother on certain topics and voiced her conservatism to my teachers. I had to miss a number of school days and assignments because of so. I also wasn't allow me to learn about banned books. So when I read the book, I couldn't see how it could be of an 'issue' within the content of the book aside for the theme around shame and sin. Bear in mind that before middle school I was placed in Catholic school so why shelter me on the concept of sin... Anyway, at the time of reading I finished my class on early North American history as well as watch a historical reality show called Colonial House. So I've become well acquinted on colonial history and especially the strong hold of religion within community. It's pretty enriching to look at other things to go along with reading a book.

[strawbryroan]

This has punched me right in three separate special interests (history, geography, and language) so now we’re getting an essay, apparently.  I’ll put a TLDR in the tags.

To start, I am a New Englander.  Here, saying “Yank” (rather than Yankee) instantly pegs you as someone not from America.  Usually, it makes us think you are either from England or a country in the Commonwealth.  

In New England, what people mean by a Yankee can vary wildly depending on what they are talking about.  If it’s about baseball, calling a New Englander a Yankee is an insult not to be taken lightly.  If it’s about heritage (i.e. that person has real Yankee blood) it likely means a WASP who can trace their bloodline to the the settlers of the 1700s and is fairly prestigious in some way.  If it’s about region, you are probably talking to someone who is from a former confederate state, and they hate you.

So, who is a Yankee, exactly?

The word Yankee seems to originate with the song Yankee Doodle.  Beginning as a nonsense song probably about harvesting in Holland, this song came over with settlers of all nationalities, as it was well known in Europe.  However, as England and the colonists fought in various wars throughout the mid 1700s, British soldiers began to mock the colonial troops for being comparatively unkempt and disorganized.  The first version of the modern song was born of this mockery.  (You can look up the specifics if you are so inclined, so I won’t bore you with them now.)  

So in case you glazed over, from approximately 1750s to 1770s a Yankee is an American colonist, but only if you don’t really like them.

Life happened, the song spread, time passed.  Fast forward to 1775.  The first battle of the Revolutionary war, the battle of Lexington, ends in absolute tragedy as the colonists stand and take a beating from the british.  Feeling that they had proved their superiority once and for all, the british played Yankee Doodle as they left the town grieving their losses.  

Oh to have their level of delusional confidence.

Needless to say, the rest of that day went extremely poorly for the british soldiers, and in an absolutely genius moment of ironic pettiness, the colonists began to play Yankee Doodle to taunt the retreating redcoats, basically saying  “if you could be beaten by disorganized idiots, what does that make you?”

This caught on like wildfire.  The colonists, tired of hearing the mockery, latched on to the new meaning with a relish that was probably a little frightening to loyalists at the time.  A Harvard grad rewrote the song to the version we know today.  For a brief time, both sides used the song in their own way, but soon the ironic meaning had won out.

For the ADHDers in the crowd, that means that from the 1770s to 1820s a Yankee is an American colonist, but mostly only if you are one, and proud of it.  

Importantly, this is where it diverges from the English “Yank,” which was still used in the first sense through the 20th century, or in a patronizingly affectionate way.

Enter the civil war and the tension that infected the country in the decades both before and after.  Southerners, especially confederate soldiers, called Northerners, especially Union soldiers, Yankees.  Using “Yankee” and “Confederate” was important because both claimed to be American, so there needed to be a distinction.  Of course, the confederates didn’t like the north.  So much bad blood was purposefully cultivated, that the word was almost always spoken in derision, despite being the default descriptor for Union state residents.

That means that from the 1830s to the 1910s (and forward), a Yankee is someone from a Union state, especially if you are from a confederate state.

The word is still used in sense 3 today by southerners.  Once, when I was a little kid, my family was driving through Virginia.  When we stopped for gas, a random guy, also pumping his gas, looked back and forth between our license plate and my dad for a few minutes before saying, in a slow, deadpan drawl “they shoot Yankees down here.”  He didn’t say another word.  To this day, we are unsure if he was kidding, trying to give us a friendly warning, or threatening us.

However, by the beginning of the 20th century, sense 2 was either alive and well simultaneously, or there were deliberate efforts to bring it back.  Either sense might be responsible for advent of the Yankees baseball team, who apparently were named this on a whim by a newspaper editor.

George Cohan, on the other hand, definitely meant sense 2 when he wrote his songs “(I’m a) Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Over There.”  He lived in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, identified as a Yankee, and seemed to think all Americans should, too.  He obviously understood the difference between “Yankee,” which he used in “(I’m a) Yankee Doodle Dandy” to refer to himself and/or the American protagonist of the song, and “Yank,” which he used when addressing British/European listeners in “Over There.”

Since then, the use of Yankee has somehow both grown, in the sense that more people are familiar with it from George Cohan’s songs, and shrunk, both in usage and in definition in the century and a half since.  So what does it really mean today?

Now, here is where Geography comes in.  You see, the colonies looked like this :

And the Union and Confederacy looked like this:

You can see that there are three distinct colors of state in each.  My proposition is this: today, Yankee usually means someone from the areas shaded in cool colors on BOTH maps.  So, the states that are purple and green in map 1 AND ALSO blue in map 2.  States not on map 1 need not apply, with the exception of Maine and Vermont, who are technically on map 1, but were not their own states yet.

HOWEVER, this does not mean that using Yankee as a synonym for American is wrong.  Rather, I feel like my definition might be a sense 4, added to the collective cultural dictionary, like the other senses were, in its own time.

Agree? Disagree? LMK!

yank poll incoming

Bonus points if you reblog and tag where you're from and your answer. thank you kisskiss

[sherdnerd]

The phrase "USAmerican" irrationally irks me. I know why people say that. Its for very understandable reasons. But the very phrase just scritches my brain in a bad way. By all means, call people from the US something other than American, but for the love of god don't try to incorporate an acronym into it. Just say Yankees and be done with it. It'll piss off people from the south because to them Yank means someone from the North but internationally it just means American.

Also I don't really get why people are so insistent on it because nobody other group really identifies themselves as American. Every other group that might has a different more specific name for themselves.

[15fishes]

*new england is basically a group of states in the northeast of the u.s, new york is not considered part of new england along with other states people may lump in with the general northeastern u.s (depending on where they live) so in some cases its important to distinguish between just vaugly the northeast/‘north’ and the actual region of new england

edit: PLZ TELL ME WHAT IT IS IF U SAID OTHER

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Thinking about the Sullivan Expedition

By Jonathan Monfiletto

During its reign over its North American territory, Great Britain attempted to keep peace with the Native Americans who already lived here. Following the French and Indian War, as the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War was known, the British government adopted the Proclamation of 1763 to declare its colonists could not settle west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The western portion of British-claimed territory was considered to be Native American land. In New York, the boundary between the colony and indigenous land lay around the modern-day Utica-Rome area. After the American Revolution, however, the proclamation was nullified and the newly ordained American citizens began to explore and settle their new country.

That brought the Public Universal Friend – the person – and the Society of Universal Friends – the group – into what they called the Genesee Country, as the first permanent, non-native settlers of what is now Yates County. It also brought Levi Benton and his family – the first settlers of the county aside from the Friends – and many other Pennsylvanians and New England Yankees to the area.

The Genesee Country became a focal point for white settlement in the early years of the American nation. That’s because of an event that happened a decade before the Friends arrived, in which soldiers who took part returned home with stories of a wonderful and bountiful land.

In 1779, General George Washington dispatched General John Sullivan and his forces to march up the Susquehanna River in eastern Pennsylvania to the Genesee River in western New York. The goal was to harass the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy who lived in that area and had allied with the British.

What became known as the Sullivan Expedition occurred after what the Continental Army considered massacres by Iroquois warriors in Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania) and Cherry Valley (south of the Mohawk River in New York). In secondary accounts of the expedition, these events read more like raids in which Iroquois forces took part alongside, and under the direction of, British forces. The Continental Army nevertheless decided it needed to specifically target the Iroquois with an offensive in response.

The expedition did not result in a large loss of life – there were a few casualties on both sides in scattered skirmishes – as thousands of Iroquois fled their villages toward British strongholds ahead of the approaching troops. The Army did not take any Iroquois captives, though that had been a goal of the expedition, and the main result was troops destroyed Iroquois villages and decimated homes and crops.

In 1929, during the 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition, Herbert D. Winters – the head of the history department of Keuka College – wrote a series of 11 articles for The Chronicle-Express that offered a detailed and extensive history of the expedition. He discusses the planning of the expedition and its beginnings and then charts Sullivan’s course. I used Winters’ writings – along with an essay by Seneca County Historian Walter J. Gable, a webpage from the National Park Service, and the Historical Marker Database website – to inform this article.

Following the course of the Susquehanna, Sullivan and his forces staged the Battle of Newtown – in present-day Elmira – against, again, a mix of British and Iroquois forces. From there, the expedition entered the Finger Lakes region through Catherine’s Town at the southern end of Seneca Lake. The expedition marched northward up the east side of Seneca Lake.

Once Sullivan’s forces reached the northern end of Seneca Lake, at the Seneca village of Kanadesaga, he sent detachments down both the west side and east side of Cayuga Lake. Though the expedition did not travel the entire length of the west side of Seneca Lake, it did reach present-day Yates County. A detachment was sent to the Seneca village of Kashong to destroy it.

As Winters documents, a force of 400 men, and later an additional 200 reinforcements, went to work destroying the crops they found there – potatoes, apples, peaches, cucumbers, watermelons, and corn. The village, like many the expedition encountered, was already deserted of people. This force joined up with the main body to continue to the Genesee River, but upon their return eastward they visited Kashong once again to inflict further destruction on the houses and buildings there.

The sesquicentennial celebration in 1929 saw the establishment of numerous monuments to the Sullivan Expedition. These consist largely of stone-and-metal monuments depicting the route of Sullivan’s forces and standard blue-and-yellow markers recalling where Iroquois villages once stood and other aspects of the expedition. There are at least 10 such monuments in Seneca County alone, with four in Cayuga County, three in Ontario County, and one each in Schuyler County and Tompkins County.

According to HMDB, there are a total of 72 historical markers dedicated to the Sullivan Expedition; other markers are located elsewhere throughout New York and Pennsylvania, along the route Sullivan traveled. There are none in Yates County that I am aware of, although one of the monuments listed in Ontario County is located at Kashong, a hamlet on the border of Ontario and Yates counties.

The markers denoting the trail of the Sullivan Expedition refer to it as a campaign “against the hostile Indian nations” that resulted in “extending westward the dominion of the United States.” A stone obelisk in Waterloo even states it is meant “to commemorate the destruction of the Indian village Skoi-Yase.” We should certainly commemorate the Sullivan Expedition, but how to commemorate it without such harmful language is a difficult question.

The Sullivan Expedition has been celebrated in the Finger Lakes region for clearing the way, figuratively and literally, to settlement of the land after the war. On the one hand, the expedition was indeed a military campaign against an enemy during wartime. On the other hand, it was a genocide, as the Continental Army sought not just to attack the Iroquois but to wipe them and their livelihood from their land. I’m wondering how we should discuss the Sullivan Expedition and place it in historical context.

The Sullivan Expedition resulted in the settlement of the Finger Lakes region, and people of white European descent would not be here without it. Yet, such a tragic and horrific event probably should not be celebrated the way it is on so many historical markers around the region.

[kanguin]

Just putting this out there, but in (US) American English, "American" specifically refers to the US. To Americans and many nations in Europe and elsewhere, there are 7 continents, where North America and South America are considered completely separate regions that are rarely if ever grouped together. So "American" as a demonym is NEVER used in American English to mean anything other than the USA. Everything is either "North American", "South American", or occasionally "Central American" if discussing cultures/countries at the boundary between the two, so "USAmerican" feels redundant and annoying to people from the United States. Hence the backlash (though calling it a slur is just braindead).

To my knowledge, many Latin American countries view the world as instead having 6 continents, where North and South America is just "America" or some translation thereof. That's why there's this conflict, there is a cultural disagreement on what these terms mean. If you think Canada and Argentina occupy the same continent, then "American" is unhelpfully unspecific, or even arrogant sounding. But if you think the border between Panama and Colombia is the boundary between two geographic continents, then "American" is unused as a term and thus free to be used to refer to people from the USA. It's all a matter of cultural definitions and perspective.

I want to be clear, I don't presume one way or another whether OP knows or doesn't know anything I just said. For all I know I could be saying things they already know, don't care about, and/or disagree with. But I have seen this argument crop up a lot on my dash, so I just thought I'd elaborate for anyone confused by one side or the other of this disagreement.

Also bonus things but Yankee is actually a specific demonym here. It's someone from the northeast, a region we call New England. So it doesn't just mean anyone from the USA. Still stupid to get mad about it when someone not from the US calls you that though.

Obsessed with people being like "calling united staters gringos, usamericans or yankis is as good as saying a racial slur" bro this is all happening because you never chose your own demonym??? like wtf is "american" there's at least 35 counties that are american.

[vertanvertan]

The Golden Monk Kratom Powder Gold importance

Golden monk really is a recommended service that promises various kratom programs. You can purchase each kratom products and also drugs, each and every a particular tried to make sure that cleanliness in addition to sexual strength. And also, you can purchase a fabulous 30-day money back guarantee found on whatever not opened product. Their specific cgmp certification translates that their own kratom remains safe and secure with respect to intake, and they start using a climate-controlled living space with their producing procedures. This will keep that kratom out of being weakened for the duration of transport helping to to prevent the application innovative. Furthermore, they make a spread of kratom stresses you could choose, utilizing choices which includes green bali, red borneo, and maeng da. They will also offer white train of thought kratom sprays and then capsules, which have been beneficial for many wishing to take advantage of their specific kratom's consequences.

It is straightforward towards plot a course and also too much info online in regards to the agency. A 'about' blog page details perhaps people today all of the North american Kratom Association's GMP program, and their specific kratom will be found does golden monk work Australia. Their very own kratom is certainly tested when it comes to heavy metals, alkaloid degrees, and microbe evaluating. The translates that your kratom is undoubtedly of the most useful, therefore it accommodates many of the conditions place by way of the American Kratom Association. Superior can be to click the link or simply visit many of our endorsed website to be familiar with golden monk kratom supplements.

Which has a respected kratom vendor is a must for your safety of your health insurance to keep from hazardous components. Consequently, you need to go shopping for some kratom product which is without question GMP certified. Right here is the sole method to guarantee that something is high-quality. This approach recognition on top of that is the reason why often the kratom can be harvested combined with created in your sanitary strategy, which can help to stop toxic contamination by joining the item. You have to search for a kratom vendor which uses some sort of cgmp certification while you shop on the net just for kratom. Evidently this may cost extra, it's value the price tag. It's also a very good way to assure you may be having a high-quality service that shall be beneficial suitable for you. As you desire, interested folks can certainly check this or simply stop by all of our official online site that allows you to be familiar with review for golden monk.

Your Yankee Kratom Association's cgmp certification is undoubtedly a crucial step for that kratom vendor. It can be a consistent list of values that will sellers will need to encounter before they could easily sell their products. There're online site Las vegas, nevada, Nv while having an impressive volume of customer reviews (3,000 ). The merchant is fairly clear regarding procedures and also quality control activities. Their kratom is definitely found provided by Uk and tried designed for credibility prior to it being supplied in the Country. The reason being that it is usually unlawful some spaces to get or just easily sell kratom in the states, as well as Golden monk will take the software after theirselves to be sure that each of their deliveries are available in deference with your procedures. Their own kratom is loaded within dense, double-layered packaging to protect yourself from affect and be sure that the kratom really is as concentrated as is feasible. This can be advisable should you be paying for kratom the first time, because it is preferable to experiment with cutting edge variations after being never in your possession.

[charlie-pippin-faraday]

wait are ppl from NJ considered new yorkers too??

Uhhhhhh no absolutely not. If you ever call someone from New Jersey a New Yorker you'd get beat up. I lumped them together because geographically they are SO close to each other, like there are trains and commuter rails that go fairly far into New Jersey that'll take you into the city. Like, people will live in New Jersey and commute to NYC every day for work. Or vice versa. People who live in New Jersey and in NYC are NOT the same but like, it's so close. If you've ever heard of the phrase "tri-state area" there's a reason for it. For those who don't live in America or don't know, have an oversimplified rundown from an American who lives fairly near there but not in there.

Here's a general map of what most people consider the tri-state area. This one looks to be broken down by counties. The purple is the state of New York, the yellow to the left is New Jersey and the yellow to the right is Connecticut. That little circle in the middle of the purple containing the cluster from New York to Bronx to Queens is New York City; I'm attaching a close-up map below.

These are the five boroughs of NYC. Most of what you see in the media as "New York City" is likely in Manhattan. Manhattan has Broadway, Times Square, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Central Park, and all that. But NYC is bigger and much more diverse than that. I mentioned Yankee Stadium in the last post - that's in the Bronx. Queens and Brooklyn are part of NYC but they're actually on a different island (Long Island) as is Staten Island. And that land across the river from Manhattan? That's New Jersey. Obviously, very very close. And people commute from NJ to NY every day. There's some cultural differences between the two, but they also share a lot. The same storms are gonna hit both NJ and NYC. I'm fairly certain they have some of the same local news channels. People in northern New Jersey will generally cheer for the New York sports teams (Yankees, Rangers, Knicks, etc). Also, it’s worth mentioning that both of the New York football teams, the New York Giants and New York Jets, play in a stadium that is actually located in New Jersey. Now, all of the same goes for Connecticut to the north, they're also connected by trains and people commute every day. But there's like a huge NJ/NY rivalry that they have with each other. However, to an outsider, you can't really tell much of a difference. It's so easy to travel between the two, people do it all the time. It's not uncommon to live in NYC and have family in NJ, or to eventually move to NJ because it's slightly cheaper and you can have more room to spread out. So, no, they are definitely not the same, but almost the same.

In my last post I said that Eddie could be either from New York or New Jersey because while they've made it clear he lives somewhere in the tri-state area, there's nothing that would say specifically where. Based on the stuff in his room, it could be either of them, both are plausible. I, personally, think he's from NYC proper (aka somewhere in those 5 boroughs), but I know some people think New Jersey, and I'm cool with that, I accept that. However, if you think anywhere else, I'm gonna call you on that and say that's straightup wrong. But yes, he is definitely from somewhere in the tri-state area, and I originally lumped NJ/NYC together because in the grand scheme of the entire world as a whole, it's basically the same place. But if you get down to the nitty gritty, it's definitely not.

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

I was today years old when I learned this about Emmett Till’s father:

Louis Till (February 7, 1922 – July 2, 1945) was an American soldier. He was the father of Emmett Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. A soldier during World War II, Louis Till was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 after being found guilty of murder and rape. The circumstances of his death were little known even to his family until they were revealed after the trial of his son's murderers ten years later, which affected subsequent discourse on the death of Emmett Till.

Life[edit]

Louis Till grew up an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri.[1] As a young man he worked at the Argo Corn Company and was an amateur boxer.[citation needed] At the age of 17, Till began courting Mamie Carthan, a woman of the same age. Her parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was "too sophisticated" for their daughter. At her mother's insistence Mamie broke off their courtship but the persistent Till won out, and they married on October 14, 1940. Both were 18 years old.[2] Their only child, Emmett Louis Till, was born on July 25, 1941. Mamie left her husband soon after learning that he had been unfaithful. Louis, enraged, choked her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at him. Eventually Mamie obtained a restraining order against him. After he repeatedly violated this order, a judge forced Till to choose between enlistment in the Army and imprisonment. Choosing the former, he enlisted in 1943.[3]

Crime and death[edit]

While serving in the Italian Campaign, Till was arrested by military police, who suspected him and another soldier, Fred A. McMurray, of the murder of an Italian woman and the rape of two others, in Civitavecchia. After a short investigation, he and McMurray were court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at the United States Army Disciplinary Training Center north of Pisa on July 2, 1945.[4][5] He had been imprisoned alongside American poet Ezra Pound, who had been imprisoned for collaborating with the Nazis and Italian Fascists; he is mentioned in lines 171–173 of Canto 74 of Pound's Pisan Cantos:[6]

"Till was hung yesterday

for murder and rape with trimmings"

Till was buried in Row 4, Grave 73 of Plot E in Oise-Aisne American Cemetery.[7]

Aftermath[edit]

Confidential magazine headlines a story on Louis Till's execution in 1956

The circumstances of Till's death were not revealed to his family; Mamie Till was only told that her husband's death was due to "willful misconduct". Her attempts to learn more were comprehensively blocked by the United States Army bureaucracy.[5] The full details of Louis Till's crimes and execution only emerged ten years later. On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, after reportedly trying to flirt with Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman. (Years later, a historian claimed that Bryant disclosed to him that she had fabricated testimony that Till made verbal or physical advances towards her in the store.[8] However, the family of Bryant has disputed this claim.[9]) Her husband and brother-in-law abducted Till and beat him to death, then threw his body into the river. Both were arrested, charged with and tried for first-degree murder, but were acquitted by an all-white jury. After the trial gained international media attention, Mississippi senators James Eastland and John C. Stennis uncovered details about Louis Till's crimes and execution and released them to reporters.[5]

The Southern media immediately leapt upon the story: various editorials claimed that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the "Yankee" media had covered up, or lied about, the record of Emmett Till's father.[10] Many of these editorials specifically attacked a short piece that had appeared in Life magazine, which presented Louis Till as having died fighting for his country in France. This article was in fact the only published piece that ever lionized Pvt. Till; in response, Life quickly published a retraction.[10] For white Southerners, however, the impression was left that the erroneous Life article was representative of the Northern media in general.[10] Subsequently, other editorials went so far as to tar Emmett Till with his father's crimes. These essentially portrayed Emmett as a serial rapist after the fashion of his father, thereby justifying his murder.[11]

In October 1955, one month after Emmett Till's abductors and murderers had been acquitted of the murder, the fate ten years earlier of Louis Till was made public for all to know (even though his military record had been confidential). The effect was to smear the reputation of young dead Emmett by associating him with the crimes for which his father had been executed. In November 1955, one month later, a grand jury declined to indict the two abductors for kidnapping Till, despite the testimony given that they had in fact admitted kidnapping him.

In 2016, 71 years after the execution of Louis Till and 61 years after the murder of his son Emmett, author John Edgar Wideman explored the circumstances leading up to and including the military conviction of Louis Till. In the book, Writing to Save a Life – The Louis Till File, Wideman examined the trial record from the US military United States v. Louis Till (CMZ288642).[12] Upon his request it had been sent to him by the United States Court of Criminal Appeals, Arlington, Virginia. This trial record was more than 200 pages long. In his review of the trial record, Wideman concluded that there may indeed be questions to be raised of conclusions reached about Louis Till's criminal conduct, drawn in and from the transcript. In 2016 Wideman stated that he could not "rescue Louis Till from prison and the hangman".[13]

[ofpsalms]

 𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄: Document - Field Notes/Formal Recommendation 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄: 09/12/2017 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: Excerpt from field notes regarding the organization of American hunters by Nicolette De Angelis. During a typical investigation into demonic activity near Cincinnati, Ohio, De Angelis received a request from the Order’s commission to investigate and monitor American hunters, to see if any had formally organized and to write a recommendation of how the Order should engage with them. Unhappy, De Angelis obliged, spending two months meeting and speaking with local hunters from across the country.   

09/12/2017 - 

 I’m not sure why there’s such a panic surrounding these hunters, or why it was requested for them to be monitored during this trip. 

 If any of you paranoid lot were itching for a fight with the Yankees, I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed. The majority seem in blissful ignorance of us, or regard our activities with complete disinterest. That being said, presented below are my findings. 

As of now, the majority American hunters seem to fit into two very specific demographics, most are working class, and are overwhelmingly from the midwestern United States. I was more surprised by the latter, what with the higher population density on the coasts- and knowing the paranormal history of the US. for example, the vampiric panics across several New England states. Perhaps more obvious and violent activity occurs in the heartlands that inspires these individuals into a hunting lifestyle? 

Most also seem to have taken up hunting after having an experience with the paranormal that they could not explain away, sometimes involving the death of a loved one. Anything goes other than that. 

As far as I understand, there is no formal organization among these hunters, as opposed to us, or their other European counterparts. The only evidence I could find of any attempt at organization among American hunters occurred around Baton Rouge, which, in classic American fashion, was a group of hunters that posed as a trust corporation that specialized in administering financial assets on behalf of their trustees. To my knowledge all were killed in a singular event involving either a coven of vampires or a coven of witches. 

There are however, large networks of hunters across the country who seem to provide each other with tips regarding cases, and on occasion collaborate. Their rallying points appear to be designated roadhouses and bars, usually hunter owned. Another fascinating aspect is how the support themselves- seemingly from scams involving credit cards and spam emails. I have also been told some hunt for a profit. This should be expected as there are no formal organizations to provide them with funds- by contrast the Vatican pays for the Order’s upkeep through our tourism profits. 

These hunters usually do not have any formal training, and are usually self-taught in their paranormal knowledge as well as knowledge of combat. Many fight as though they are fighting another human being, and can be prone to bouts of potentially fatal recklessness in doing so.

With these factors in mind, it is extremely impressive that they are as successful as they are. Some of the hunters I interviewed have told me they have been in this business for over a decade. Unfortunately many still meet their ends during hunting accidents. 

Procedural Recommendation:  It is my formal recommendation to the commission that the Order keep collaboration and engagement with American hunters to a minimum, but that formal monitoring is not necessary. Though unorganized and informal, these hunters have an unspoken agreement of secrecy among them, and thus do not pose an active threat to the Order’s security. 

The Order is not the international policeman of who can and cannot hunt, and any semblance of authority we may have had in the matter dissolved in the late 18th century. I imagine this is not a territorial grab for North America either. Need I remind the council that the United States is Protestant-majority, and with the Order’s presence having been long since established in majority of states in Mexico and in Quebec -through members of the Order hailing from the aforementioned locations and our affiliates who receive formal training through the Church- a formal establishment in America or training of American hunters for emergency response would be unnecessary. 

My recommendation of minimal engagement is given in consideration to their own safety rather than to ours. 

- N. R. D., Roma, 2017 

[southernsteel82]

Confedetate Veteran Sergeant Berry Greenwood Benson.

Washington D.C. Confedetate Veterans Reunion And Parade 1917.

He wears the uniform he wore the day he walked home in 1865 carrying his rifle he carried that day as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Berry Benson was born on Feburary 9th 1843 in Hamburg, South Carolina, just across the Savannah river from Augusta, Georgia. In 1860 Berry Benson enlisted with his brother in a local militia unit aged 17 and 15 respectively. The next spring they witnessed the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.

After the surrender of Fort Sumter the 1st South Carolina Regiment was sent to Virginia where the Benson brothers served under A.P. Hill and Thomas Jackson. The unit fought in battles such as Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Antietam, and served in Jackson's valley campaign as Jackson's foot cavalry. Berry Benson was wounded at Chancellorsville and thus missed the battle of Gettysburg.

But he had recuperated by winter 1863 and returned to his unit where he was appointed as a scout.

The spring of 1864 brought another Union offensive into The Wilderness.

After a confusing, bloody battle in dense woods, the Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, attempted to get around the Confederate army and march on Richmond, Virginia, but was checked at Spotsylvania, Virginia. There followed one of the most terrible battles of the Civil War, in which the severest action occurred at the "Bloody Angle," where Benson fought.

By then the young soldier had won a reputation for scouting enemy positions.

At Spotsylvania he reconnoitered the Union camp and on an impulse stole a Yankee colonel's horse, leading it back to Confederate lines. Sent out a second time on Lee's orders, he was captured and imprisoned at the military prison in Point Lookout, Maryland.

On the second day of his captivity, Benson slipped unseen into the waters of Chesapeake Bay and swam two miles to escape but unfortunately for him he was recaptured in Union-occupied Virginia, and then was sent first to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., then to the new prison camp at Elmira, New York.

What happened next is the Civil War's version of "The Great Escape."

Once there he joined a group attempting to tunnel out but the effort was discovered and broken up.

Soon thereafter on October 7, 1864 at four o'clock in the morning he and nine

companions entered a tunnel sixty-six feet long which they had been digging for about two

months.

The earth extracted had been carried away in their haversacks and disposed of.

On reaching the outside of the stockade the prisoners scattered in parties of two and three, Sergeant Benson going alone, since the companion he had intended to take with him failed to escape.

He headed south and miraculously reached Confedetate lines.

Sergeant Benson, half a century later, still preserved the passes given him from Newmarket, Virginia, where he first reached Early's army, to Richmond.

He wrote in 1911 that the men who made their escape were:

Washington B. Trawiek,

of the Jeff. Davis Artillery, Alabama, then living at Cold Springs, Texas; John Fox Maull, of

the Jeff. Davis Artillery, deceased; J. P. Putegnat, deceased; G. G. Jackson of Wetumpka, Alabama;

William Templin, of Paunsdale, Alabama; J.P.Scruggs, of Limestone Springs, South Carolina;

Cecrops Malone, of Company F. Ninth Alabama Infantry, then living at Waldron, Ark.; Crawford

of the Sixth Virginia Cavalry, and Glenn.

Most of them were present at Appomattox.

Upon learning of the surrender of General Johnson in North Carolina Benson and his brother walked home.

In 1868 Sargent Benson married his wife Jeannie Oliver with whom he had six children with and, while working as an accountant, developed a complex book-keeping method that he called the “Zero System” and sold it to companies all over the country.

He and his wife wrote poetry for publication, and his wife and daughters were all fine pianists.

One of his daughters studied violin in New York and became a concert performer.

Berry Benson became an advocate for striking mill workers and worked on developing high-protein food crops for poor black sharecroppers.

Benson also became a nationally known puzzle solver, breaking a secret French code known as the"Undecipherable Cipher," in 1896 (On a challenge) and informed the U.S. War Department that he had done so.

During the Spanish-American War Benson offered his services to the United States Government but unfortunately the war ended before he could be of use.

He was perhaps best known, however, for his private investigation into the case of Leo Frank, an Atlanta factory manager accused of raping and murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913. Perceiving discrepancies in prosecution testimony, Benson concluded Frank was innocent. His logical arguments persuaded the Georgia governor that there was enough uncertainty in the case to commute Frank’s sentence from death to life imprisonment, but that did not prevent the accused’s subsequent lynching.

He also headed a campaign to support French war orphans in World War I and convinced his friends and neighbors to adopt some of them.

He later advised the U.S. attorney general of the possibility of fraud involving European and American fiscal exchange rates and, when he became aware of the activities of Carlo Ponzi, specifically warned the Massachusetts attorney general of the original “Ponzi Scheme.”

In the midst of this productive life, Benson became an officer in the Confederate Survivors Association and was chosen to model for the statue of the infantryman atop the Augusta monument, which was dedicated in 1878.

Even in advanced age Berry Benson remained fit and active leading boy scouts on fifteen mile hikes and attending veteran reunions and parades until his death on January 1st 1923 he was 79.

"In time, even death itself might be abolished; who knows but it may be given to us after this life to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning role call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle.

Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say, Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”

~ 1st Seargent Berry Greenwood Benson 1st South Carolina Infantry Regiment Company H.

[arcticdementor]

Is America disintegrating into anarchy and civil war among races, religions, and regions? Is the country more divided than ever before? The answer is no. The social and economic divides among white Northerners and white Southerners, Blacks and whites, Catholics and Protestants and Jews were much more intense in 1920 than they are today in 2020. What has happened is that the formerly unified, mostly Northern mainline Protestant American establishment has—perhaps temporarily—broken down, allowing the actual diversity of interests and opinions in the United States to be expressed rather than suppressed. If the emerging woke national establishment has its way, however, that diversity of viewpoints and values will soon be suppressed once again, in favor of an intolerant and exclusive doctrine that greatly resembles the old-time Social Gospel from which it is derived.

With the exceptions of Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, every American president between 1861 and 1933 was a Republican mainline Protestant from the North or Midwest. The Republican Party, still the Lincoln coalition of Northern industrialists and Yankee Protestants, dominated Congress in the same era. Industry and finance were in the hands of a small number of Northeastern financiers, many of them old-stock Northeastern Protestants like J.P. Morgan. While there were some important Jewish financiers, Jews along with Catholics were kept out of many snobbish Wall Street firms until well after World War II.

…

The Democratic Party that dominated the United States between the 1930s and the 1980s had a few Yankee progressive members, but it was essentially the old Jacksonian alliance of white Southerners and non-British “white ethnics” in the North. If Harry Truman is understood correctly as a cultural Southerner from Missouri, then with one exception every Democratic president between Roosevelt and Obama was a white Southerner—Truman, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. The one exception was John F. Kennedy, from the other wing of the Jacksonian anti-Yankee alliance of Southerners and Irish Americans. Meanwhile, the Solid South combined with the seniority system ensured that Southerners, many of them segregationists, dominated Congress and the Senate throughout the New Deal era.

…

Driven from the White House for half a century after 1932, marginalized in Congress and circumvented by federal state capitalism, the Northern mainline Protestant elite managed to preserve its dominance in three areas: The “Deep State,” the major nonprofit foundations, and elite prep schools and universities. In the movie The Good Shepherd (2007), Joe Pesci’s Mafioso says to Matt Damon’s WASP CIA agent: “You know, we Italians have our families and the church, the Irish have the homeland, the Jews their tradition, the [Blacks] their music. What do you guys have?” Damon’s character replies: “We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

In addition to the “Deep State,” other national institutions that the neo-Jacksonians of the New Deal coalition never conquered in their revolution against Yankeedom include the major nonprofit foundations like Ford and Rockefeller and the Ivy League universities. The culture of what might be called the NGO-academic-spook complex remained deeply rooted in the Social Gospel wing of Northern mainline Protestantism of the early 1900s.

The Social Gospel progressivism these institutions have long embraced is a Janus-faced tradition. One face is technocratic, holding that social and global conflicts, rather than reflecting the tragic nature of human existence, are “problems” which can be “solved” by nonpartisan experts guided by something called “social science.” The other face of Social Gospelism is irrational, and rooted in post-millennial Protestant theology convinced that we are on the verge of a world of peace and prosperity, if only wicked people at home and wicked regimes abroad can be crushed once and for all.

This mentality with its bizarre synthesis of science-inspired technocracy and millenniarian zeal, was shared by many turn-of-the-century Progressives, including Woodrow Wilson, a Southern-born Northern transplant. As Dorothy Ross points out in The Origins of American Social Science (1990), Wilson, like many leading American Progressives, was the child of a mainline Protestant minister.

Shedding its specifically Northern mainline Protestant cultural attributes, a version of Social Gospel Protestantism has mutated into the secular religion of wokeness, the orthodoxy of the universities and the increasingly important nonprofit sector. Its converts include many of the affluent white secular children and grandchildren of members of mainline Protestant denominations like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists, which are hemorrhaging membership to the category of religious “nones.”

By evolving from an ethnoregional culture into a crusading secular creed disseminated by the universities, the public school system, the corporate media, and corporate HR departments, post-Protestant wokeness is capable of assimilating anyone, of any race or ethnicity, native-born or immigrant, who is willing to conform to its weird rituals and snobbish etiquette. The Long Island lockjaw accent has been replaced by the constantly updated “woke” dialect of the emerging American elite as a status marker. You may have an Asian or Spanish surname, but if you know what “nonbinary” means and say “Latinx” (a term rejected by the overwhelming majority of Americans of Latin American origin) then you are potentially eligible for membership in the new national ruling class.

…

Although the woke managerial culture in the United States has lost most of the vestiges of its Yankee mainline Protestant origins, the emerging American national oligarchy has the same enemies as the old New England-Midwestern WASP oligarchy: white Southerners, Catholic white ethnics and observant Jews. This became clear in the summer of 2020. The woke left not only demanded the removal of statues of Confederate traitors—a perfectly reasonable demand—but also targeted Columbus, the icon of Italian Americans, and Spanish Catholic saints and conquistadors. Democratic liberals warned, in the tones of 19th-century Yankee Protestant nativists, that papists were taking over the Supreme Court. At the same time, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, Italian American by ancestry but woke by culture, exhibited a striking double standard when it came to public gatherings by left-wing protesters on the one hand and, on the other, Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.

…

What we are witnessing is a power grab carried out chiefly by some white Americans against other white Americans. The goal of the new woke national establishment, the successor to the old Northeastern mainline Protestant establishment that was temporarily displaced by the neo-Jacksonian New Deal Democratic coalition, is to stigmatize, humiliate and disempower recalcitrant Southern, Catholic, and Jewish whites, along with members of ethnic and racial minorities who refuse to be assimilated into the new national orthodoxy disseminated from New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the prestigious private universities of New England. Properly understood, the Great Awokening is the revenge of the Yankees.

[allbeendonebefore]

Any headcanons for Oliver? I read the list of headcanons for some of the other provinces that you did and I’m very curious.

oh boy those were ages ago i’ll dig up a few so i can remember the vibe of the things i wrote

for those of you just joining us, my past headcanon posts

BC | AB | SK | MB 1 + 2 | NB

while other provinces are torn between living in one city or another or out in the middle of nowhere, oliver doesn’t have that issue. he lives in toronto and holidays in one of an entire network of cottages across the province and does not feel conflicted about that in the least. and he doesnt live “in toronto” in the gta, he lives IN toronto in some old annex style house and good luck getting rid of him.

he LOVES living alone, he relishes his independence, he does NOT miss being trapped living with jean NOT ONE BIT!! he does NOT create fake arguments over what should go over the mantle or what to make for dinner with the chattery squirrel outside because he’s LONELY.

Self indulgent headcanon but since he understands how difficult it is to live in the city and how valuable a good education is, he will occasionally rent out the basement to a quiet and tidy university student or two. He has a soft spot for kids who are trying to find their feet and figure out who they are away from their parents (as long as they do their chores).

Despite his downtown living and his urban elite image, he has experience working in factories and on farms and that tends to catch people off guard. He knows his way around milking a cow and he loves to tinker with machinery, getting his hands dirty doesn’t bother him even though he does love to mope and solicit pity. 

he just cannot physically help being overdramatic and bitchy, it’s just the tough outer layer he developed trying to survive american assimilation (and jean’s cutting words lol). he thinks his sarcasm is among his most endearing quality, since the people who Get It always laugh.

OF COURSE THERE ARE GRADES OF MAPLE SYRUP ??? why Wouldnt there be

he thinks his most relatable story is tfw you cut the bag of milk too open and it sloshes everywhere and doesn’t get the mixed reception at parties

It’s not that he doesn’t drink or that he’s against drinking, per se, at least, not anymore. He just likes being the designated driver because he likes the moral high ground, not because he’s secretly a mother hen who wants everyone to get home safe. 

he grew up in the southern... peninsula (you know that... sorry i get so confused about whats north and west in ontario.)Anyway it’s not that he doesn’t Also represent Northern Ontario, it’s just sometimes hard to pry him out of his original comfort zone and he sometimes gets stuck in his own head in the south. 

it’s not like mani would know what to do with all that space up there anyway, it’s just best that he takes care of it, it’s always best that he be left to manage things, he’s just more organized, he’s the brains, he’s the one with the vision, no he does not accept constructive criticism, what kind of leader would he be if he was openly questioned... that’s not how he was raised at all. imagine, entertaining other people’s ideas. 

Ollie likes to think he’s the rational one but pretty much every move he made in his early days was out of fear and anxiety; he can sometimes be overly cautious and people who just go out and do things just baffle him. 

He’s really open with his feelings (particularly when it involves complaining, which he loves) but he’s horrible at delegating tasks or asking for help. He also gets easily frustrated when people have given up on helping him without him having to ask, but he still insists on trying to do everything himself.

is it weird i cannot fathom him in anything but an mlm relationship lol

He won’t forgive rude behaviour, even if he appears like a doormat to an American. He remembers when he’s been rude to and compensates by being overly polite. The only person who’s immune to this seems to be Jean, who always seems to be getting away with being rude...

that said he drops way more f-bombs than most of the others and americans always either think it’s either adorable (and make fun of his perceived accent) or are SO SHOCKED that their INNOCENT BABY FRIEND would have such LANGUAGE!

has such. a weird. distorted. romantic idea of what road trips are. i dont know if he knows how to travel in places where rest stops arent cleaned every couple hours or if he’s ever had to pee in the bush or stay in a place without electricity in the time that he’s owned a car. 

he’s always been a huge natural history nerd, he loves spending time in natural history exhibits and geeking out over weird birds and fish and minerals. 

shakespeare in the park anyone?! shakespeare in the living room??? shakespeare over zoom conference? reciting shakespeare while outside oil painting the fall colours?! DID SOMEONE MENTION SHAKESPEARE.

he also loves sailing and swimming and he’s got a weirdly extensive canoe collection squirreled away somewhere. 

had a LOT of pressure on him as a kid to be the Good and Perfect child, not like those nasty yankees. He’s not very good at acting out and being rebellious, but he will absolutely stand his ground on an issue that’s dear to him, particularly if his control over something is threatened. 

anywhere you can’t take a train to is fake adn should not have been counted

he’s still an avid tea drinker and has lots of opinions about tea time and has been making the same recipes for literally 200 years (jean puts up with this because he cannot be assed to make his own little fine cakes, ok, and if ollie has extra for him to take home its to his advantage. if oliver makes extra specifically because he knows jean likes them, that’s for him to know. and same with homemade fudge and butter tarts and candy and ice cream, neither of them outgrew their sweet tooth) 

also he’s somewhat motivated by jean’s blunt reactions to his baking because thats how he’s going to survive the blue ribbon baking and jam making events against those tough and bitter old ladies, jean is perfect practice (although some of his best and most nuanced insults don’t translate very well)

his french is not bad nor is he embarrassed of it, he’s annoying in both official languages.

he gets mad when you say he’s practically interchangeable with matt but he still seems to think the things he does are things that all canadians do or like or have, i mean, why wouldn’t they? but they still owe him for that.

he compensates for his relative lack of interest or seeming inability to ask the others how they’re doing (because thats rude! and prying! and he’s sure they’re just fine! he doesn’t meddle anymore because people get upset when he rearranges their pantries) with an almost weird obsession with his self image and what’s happening internationally

[maddie-grove]

Little Book Review: American Nations

Author: Colin Woodard.

Publication Date: 2011.

Genre: History.

Premise: In this history of the USA, Woodard argues that the country (plus Canada and northern Mexico) is divided into eleven “nations.” Most originate from different groups of European colonizers: the Spanish (“El Norte”), the French (“New France”), the Puritans (“Yankeedom”), the Dutch (“New Netherlands”), the Quakers and various Continental immigrants who settled around Pennsylvania (“the Midlands”), the mostly southern English aristocracy (“Tidewater”), the Scots-Irish (“Greater Appalachia”), and the English aristocracy who first made a stop in the Caribbean (“Deep South”). Coming along later were the “Left Coast” (founded along much of the west coast by a mixture of Yankees and Greater Appalachians during and after the Gold Rush) and the “Far West” (largely founded by corporations starting in the mid-nineteenth century). The “First Nation,” of course, was there all along. Woodard illustrates how these eleven nations and their interactions influenced the course of American history from colonial times to 2010.

Thoughts: This is a history that paints in very broad strokes. It’s best viewed as a history of elites who dictated the politics of their regions and fought with elites from other regions. There’s nothing wrong with this--the most powerful people in a region are necessarily going to determine most of its politics--but Woodard could be more upfront about it. He alludes to it--he acknowledges the significant, politically active yet extremely marginalized black population of the Deep South, for example, and he indicates that political power was less evenly distributed in some regions than others--but sometimes he attributes to cheerful assimilation what could be explained more easily by a lack of political influence (as in his explanation of why immigration didn’t change the character of some “nations” more). 

Even so, he offers an interesting lens for viewing American history, and it does line up with voting patterns, as well as my own experience living in all three parts of the South. (Western North Carolina is a different animal from eastern North Carolina, and going to college in Charleston, South Carolina, was a shock, to say the least.) His style is engaging, even though his pacing is brisk, and he provides plenty of colorful details. It gets really rushed once he finishes with Reconstruction, but up through then he’s vivid and thoughtful.

I was naturally (being from there) most interested in the various parts of the south, and Woodard’s depiction of the Deep South (and, to a lesser extent, Greater Appalachia and Tidewater) highlighted something very interesting about white supremacy: specifically, that white privilege is often a shitty consolation prize for less powerful white people. Don’t get me wrong; white privilege is very real, and it’s way easier to be white in America, but that’s because black people are treated so, so horribly. It’s not because the average white person in America is getting an objectively good deal. Yet rich white people will trick poor white people into thinking they’re doing great because most black people are doing worse. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the south has the shittiest labor laws in the country, for example. 

Hot Goodreads Take: Most negative reviews take Woodard to task for his bias against the south. I think they’re being hypersensitive and overly defensive; the south absolutely has huge systemic problems that other regions don’t, at least not to the same degree. At the same time, white Americans from outside the south are sometimes too eager to characterize their own region as the “good” one in comparison, and Woodard has a bit of that going on. Well, he is from Yankeedom.