Which of the four groups of English colonists had the most long-term influence on America?

[darklordoftech]

?

[TheReckoning]

Likely Puritans, as they were largely composed of WASPs- who definitely have the most long-term influence on the United States.

[sparkey]

There's a good argument for the Quakers, as a lot of their early ideals came to be adopted by the whole, like religious pluralism, equality of the sexes, anti slavery, etc. IIRC the standard (media) American accent is closest to theirs as well.

[F. Joe Haydn]

Puritans. The foundation of the American republic was largely thanks to the Puritans and their descendants in New England. The Quakers were too small to have a major influence, even if some of their radical ideas came to be adopted nationally, while the Scotch-Irish were traditionally more at the margins of society. I would put the Cavaliers in second place after the Puritans, as they were largely responsible for the institution of slavery, obviously a very important part of American history.

[Orser67]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

[F. Joe Haydn]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

[Orser67]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but iirc the author positioned Yankeedom and the Deep South on opposite ends of the age old debate between individual liberty and communal action. One example that comes to my mind would be Obamacare's individual mandate, which was pioneered by Massachusetts and (at least notionally) led to cheaper healthcare and higher coverage rates, but at the cost of forcing people to buy healthcare.

Obviously the elephant in the room is the treatment of minorities in the South. In no way am I trying to defend the South or the political philosophies of white Southerners, but at a high level I think it would be fair to say that (at least notionally) Southerners valued individual freedom for individuals they viewed as true citizens/Americans/white males (and to be fair, that general line of thinking was hardly unique to the South at different points in U.S. history).

[F. Joe Haydn]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but iirc the author positioned Yankeedom and the Deep South on opposite ends of the age old debate between individual liberty and communal action. One example that comes to my mind would be Obamacare's individual mandate, which was pioneered by Massachusetts and (at least notionally) led to cheaper healthcare and higher coverage rates, but at the cost of forcing people to buy healthcare.

Obviously the elephant in the room is the treatment of minorities in the South. In no way am I trying to defend the South or the political philosophies of white Southerners, but at a high level I think it would be fair to say that (at least notionally) Southerners valued individual freedom for individuals they viewed as true citizens/Americans/white males (and to be fair, that general line of thinking was hardly unique to the South at different points in U.S. history).

Southerners hated Obamacare because they hated Obama because he was a Democrat. On actual issues of individual liberty like abortion and LGBT rights they are extremely authoritarian.

To the contrary, I think it would be extremely unfair to say that the South was ever a society that put much value on individual freedom. From the beginning the South was extremely autocratic and ruled by aristocratic Cavaliers, in stark contrast to New England. The state of Massachusetts, the leader of the pack, had a long tradition of elections, local governance, and citizen participation in government. You refer to Yankees as "communal", but this communalism derived from their belief in collective action and majority rule, which required strong civil liberties. You should not mistake their communalism for authoritarianism, which most Yankees were instinctually averse to. John Adams, for one, loved to talk about how the Puritans had brought their love of liberty and hatred of tyranny to New England. Further on, in the 19th century, the North was renowned (or reviled) as a place of free speech and free religion, where men spoke their minds on the evils of slavery and followed their own path to God (or didn't believe at all). By contrast, the South was firm in its religious orthodoxy and its state governments refused to countenance any expressions of abolitionist sentiment. While the North valued liberty and modern notions of industry, the South was much more traditionalist in its culture, prizing "honor" and the ridiculously antiquated notion of "Southern chivalry". No wonder then that when the Civil War broke out, the leaders of the Confederacy fashioned themselves as defenders of traditional values against a decadent Northern liberalism run amok. After all, it was the North that was fighting to make men free and the South that wanted to keep them enslaved. During Reconstruction the victorious Union was able to temporarily democratize the shattered South; South Carolina, the first to secede, had never even held a Presidential popular vote before Radical Republicans rewrote the state constitution in 1868. But all this progress inevitably spawned a legion of reactionaries, who undid all that had been achieved with a new wave of their own state constitutions that barred blacks and poor whites from the franchise. By the turn of the century the South was a one-party apartheid state. As the new century unfolded, again and again the South would demonstrate its hostility to individual liberty. The most obvious example is black civil rights, but it goes much further than that. It's not a coincidence, for instance, that the Scopes Monkey Trial was in Dayton, Tennessee. The trial had a distinct regional flair to it, with many Southerners viewing Clarence Darrow and the ACLU as meddling Yankees from the godless North. Certain people like to harp on about the Northeast's traditional piety and Puritan roots (I am one of them, but for entirely different reasons), but during the 19th century the region became much more secular, and liberal in its Christianity, while the South took the opposite course toward fundamentalism. This is evident also in the Prohibition debate, in which the South was the region most strongly in favor of banning alcohol. And today, we see that religious authoritarianism in their opposition to abortion and LGBT rights, as I started off with.

[darklordoftech]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

I was inspired by Albion’s Seed, which is likely the main source for American Nations. The Deep South seems to have been ultra-Cavaliers.

[darklordoftech]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but iirc the author positioned Yankeedom and the Deep South on opposite ends of the age old debate between individual liberty and communal action. One example that comes to my mind would be Obamacare's individual mandate, which was pioneered by Massachusetts and (at least notionally) led to cheaper healthcare and higher coverage rates, but at the cost of forcing people to buy healthcare.

Actually, Republicans including Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, and Jim Demint supported the individual mandate from when the Heritage Foundation proposed it in 1989 to when Obama announced his support for it.

[Orser67]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but iirc the author positioned Yankeedom and the Deep South on opposite ends of the age old debate between individual liberty and communal action. One example that comes to my mind would be Obamacare's individual mandate, which was pioneered by Massachusetts and (at least notionally) led to cheaper healthcare and higher coverage rates, but at the cost of forcing people to buy healthcare.

Actually, Republicans including Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, and Jim Demint supported the individual mandate from when the Heritage Foundation proposed it in 1989 to when Obama announced his support for it.

Yes, there's an interesting backstory there about how some Republicans at one point supported it as a market-oriented alternative to liberal ideas for healthcare reform, and I'm not here to defend them against charges of flip-flopping, hypocrisy, etc. (I'm also moderately surprised you didn't mention Romney).

But regardless, there is a difference between supporting a concept in theory and actually supporting its implementation, and by the time the mandate actually came close to becoming federal law, Republican officeholders universally opposed it. It went on to become probably the single most unpopular part of Obamacare and the one aspect of Obamacare that Republicans were actually able to repeal.

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

I was inspired by Albion’s Seed, which is likely the main source for American Nations. The Deep South seems to have been ultra-Cavaliers.

The Deep South also had a strong influence from the Caribbean, as the sugar plantations of places like Barbados influenced the relatively brutal treatment of slaves (as compared to other parts of the South).

[Orser67]

Interesting question. I'm not sure if there's really one right answer here, but there's a book called American Nations that looks at American history through the lens of different nations:

Tidelands=Cavaliers
Yankeedom=Puritans
Greater Appalachia=Scotch-Irish
Midlands=Quakers
Deep South
New Netherland (NYC metro area)
(there are a few other groups in Canada and/or west of the Mississippi)

The book argues that the Deep South and Yankeedom have struggled against each other for supremacy throughout American history, with the Midlands as the key "swing vote".

Just looking at the Wikipedia page, the idea that the Deep South values "individual freedoms" but Yankeedom doesn't is absurd.

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but iirc the author positioned Yankeedom and the Deep South on opposite ends of the age old debate between individual liberty and communal action. One example that comes to my mind would be Obamacare's individual mandate, which was pioneered by Massachusetts and (at least notionally) led to cheaper healthcare and higher coverage rates, but at the cost of forcing people to buy healthcare.

Obviously the elephant in the room is the treatment of minorities in the South. In no way am I trying to defend the South or the political philosophies of white Southerners, but at a high level I think it would be fair to say that (at least notionally) Southerners valued individual freedom for individuals they viewed as true citizens/Americans/white males (and to be fair, that general line of thinking was hardly unique to the South at different points in U.S. history).

Southerners hated Obamacare because they hated Obama because he was a Democrat. On actual issues of individual liberty like abortion and LGBT rights they are extremely authoritarian.

Well, I think it would be reductionist to say that all Republicans hated Obamacare solely because it was the signature legislative accomplishment of a Democrat; many Republicans genuinely believe that economic interventionism, particularly by the federal government, is a bad thing, both for philosophical reasons and for constitutional reasons. And I think the debate over Obamacare plays more broadly into Woodard's dichotomy; Yankeedom and its allies tends to favor communal (note: nowhere did I say authoritarian) action to build (something closer to) a utopian society, and the Deep South and its allies tend to oppose any government intervention in the markets, especially by the federal government. Throughout U.S. history, you can see this same general debate taking place over taxation, tariffs, federal infrastructure improvements, the Great Society, etc. The one exception I can think of the is the New Deal, where Southern support was crucial to passing many early New Deal laws, but even there the period of liberal lawmaking ended in large part because Southern leaders soured on it and formed a coalition with Northern Republicans that largely held up until the 1960s.

The Deep South has never placed much emphasis on equality and its leaders have historically tended to severely limit the number of people who were regarded as deserving of citizenship. I think it's tempting to deny that the Deep South, and American conservatism more generally, has any real philosophical basis for its actions, and instead argue that it simply seeks to uphold its own power and racial hierarchy. But while I absolutely think that both of those things play a role, I don't think it would be accurate or useful to completely dismiss the very real belief that many conservatives have that the federal government should have little role in the lives of citizens.

[Orser67]

Perhaps some will find the way this article describes Woodard's groups as less objectionable than the Wikipedia article:

Yankeedom: Founded by Puritans, residents in Northeastern states and the industrial Midwest tend to be more comfortable with government regulation. They value education and the common good more than other regions.

Deep South: Dixie still traces its roots to the caste system established by masters who tried to duplicate West Indies-style slave society, Woodard writes. The Old South values states’ rights and local control and fights the expansion of federal powers.

[TDAS04]

Voted Scotch Irish, but it's hard to say.