Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South [Paperback]

Grady McWhiney (Author), Forrest McDonald (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 1989

Cracker Culture is a provocative study of social life in the Old South that probes the origin of cultural differences between the South and the North throughout American history. Among Scotch-Irish settlers the term “Cracker” initially designated a person who boasted, but in American usage the word has come to designate poor whites. McWhiney uses the term to define culture rather than to signify an economic condition. Although all poor whites were Crackers, not all Crackers were poor whites; both, however, were Southerners.

The author insists that Southerners and Northerners were never alike. American colonists who settled south and west of Pennsylvania during the 17th and 18th centuries were mainly from the “Celtic fringe” of the British Isles. The culture that these people retained in the New World accounts in considerable measure for the difference between them and the Yankees of New England, most of whom originated in the lowlands of the southeastern half of the island of Britain. From their solid base in the southern backcountry, Celts and their “Cracker” descendants swept westward throughout the antebellum period until they had established themselves and their practices across the Old South. Basic among those practices that determined their traditional folkways, values, norms, and attitudes was the herding of livestock on the open range, in contrast to the mixed agriculture that was the norm both in southeastern Britain and in New England. The Celts brought to the Old South leisurely ways that fostered idleness and gaiety. Like their Celtic ancestors, Southerners were characteristically violent; they scorned pacifism; they considered fights and duels honorable and consistently ignored laws designed to control their actions. In addition, family and kinship were much more important in Celtic Britain and the antebellum South than in England and the Northern United States. Fundamental differences between Southerners and Northerners shaped the course of antebellum American history; their conflict in the 1860s was not so much brother against brother as culture against culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Assuredly the most controversial book about the South to emerge in years, and the discussion of its argument is certain to be heated and extensive.”
—Louisiana History

“Cracker Culture will enjoy a permanent place in the literature of its field. . . . Assign [it] and stand back to watch the fur fly.”
—Journal of the Early Republic

“McWhiney defines and explains the ‘cracker’ culture that emanated from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and northern England to become the dominant culture among British settlers in the Old South. Characterized primarily by the values of herdsmen, this white ethnic culture valued leisure for leisure’s sake, emphasized an oral tradition over the written word, and placed stress upon ideas that were antagonistic to the life-style of English-dominated northerners. It was, therefore, only a matter of time and circumstance before the two basic cultural heritages—Celtic and English—would collide in a devastating war.”
—Choice

About the Author

Grady McWhiney (1928–2006) was a noted historian of the American South and of the Civil War. He taught at a number of institutions, notably at The University of Alabama and Texas Christian University. Among his many booklength works are Attack and Die: Civil War Tactics and the Southern Heritage and Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (vol. 1), both available from The University of Alabama Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: University Alabama Press (May 30, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0817304584
• ISBN-13: 978-0817304584
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #337,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Paradigm, March 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Paperback)

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

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not the whole story, November 13, 2000

By 

Chris Johnson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Paperback)

Why is the South so different from the rest of the country? It wasn't always so. In our revolutionary period, Southerners were just as angry at British offenses in the North as Northerners were, while Northerners cheered South Carolina's victory at Sullivan's Island just as passionately as Southrons did. Virginians like George Washington and Daniel Morgan fought in the North while the greatest general of the Southern theater was the Rhode Islander Nathaniel Greene.

Why did Northern and Southern unity quickly become mutual suspicion and eventually dissolve into hostility? Was race the only reason? To Grady McWhiney, the question is largely a cultural one. McWhiney feels that Southern culture was and is Celtic. Most of the original settlers in the North came from England, while most of the South's early settlers came from the most Celtic regions of the British Isles(Ulster, Scotland, Cumberland, the West Country, etc). These settlers put a Celtic stamp on the South, influenced all who settled there, Celt or not, and brought with them their age-old hostility to the English, a hostility that was(and continues to be)reciprocated by the "English" of the North.

Celtic influence on Southern culture cannot be seriously disputed. Anyone who has ever heard bluegrass or country music can hear just one aspect of it. And that North and South are still mutually hostile is also unarguable. The uneducated bigot in the movies usually has a Southern accent and prominently displays a Confederate flag. But I think McWhiney oversimplifies. Celtic influence was there, but it was not alone. As Charles Hudson pointed out in The Southeastern Indians, Native American influence on Southern culture(which McWhiney ignores)was considerable, a fact well known to many of us with families from the southeastern US who have unsuccessfully tried to untangle our genealogies.

In short, Cracker Culture is worth your time. Just don't stop with it.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cracker Culture, February 15, 2004

By 

Cwn_Annwn (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Paperback)

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