I posted this in another thread but it depends on who you ask.
A Non-American: Any American
A Southerner: Anyone from the North, usually with an expletive attached.
Kevin Phillips: An American of English descent, whose ancestors first settled in New England before spreading out across the Northern states in the early to mid 19th century. Typically of a Congressionalist or low church protestant denomination.
Rather anti-Catholic, prone to nativism and cultural imperialism, but also tended to favor equality (at least before the law if not generally) and thus their opposition to slavery. There is a tendency towards labeling the whole group as "proto-marxists", which is an over generalization at best. The vast majority were very much on board with capitalism, especially the pro-business nationalism of the Federalist, Whig and GOP Republican Parties. They also defined the American middle class with their values (mainly because they had one of the highest concentrations of middle class wealth at the time and the Northern industrial states were the only region that could support a large middle class at the time.
Most white northerners have mixed ancestry and the tendency of people of mixed German descent to opt for identifying as German-American, and likewise for those of Irish descent, means that "Yankees" as defined by Phillips, have largely been squeezed out demographically and barely exist as a distinct population.
So like, this reminds me a lot of pre aughts media like: The Big Chill, that one movie where Elijah Wood is electrocuted, that movie where Michael Douglas is an English professor. Very genteel, cool headed families. I feel like Protestants more generally count as this, like Plains Scandinavians such as Thorstein Veblen or my grandma who has largely Scotch Irish heritage. I’d imagine you can recognize these people by a type of smarminess and decorum, which makes them distinctly Northeastern, because midwesterners historically dealt more with sand than with people
Area wise I wonder where Northeasterners moved into the Midwest. Like for instance the Connecticut reserve. Those areas would make them basically the 19th century correlate of the rural white vote, as the urban non white vote is a parallel for Catholic and Orthodox whites.
