The Confederacy "pulls a Meiji"

By the time of the Civil War the South considered itself a Norman race and culture, standing opposed to the wimpy and greedy Anglo-Saxons and that pursuit which gave the English settler colonies such success and wealth - commerce.

A lot of Confederate leadership didn't even consider Yankees to be Anglo-Saxons, but mongrels inferior to the pureblooded Confederates.
 

aspie3000

Banned
A lot of Confederate leadership didn't even consider Yankees to be Anglo-Saxons, but mongrels inferior to the pureblooded Confederates.

What was their justification for this belief? The higher number of immigrants in the north? I had always heard that the plantation aristocrats believed themselves to be Normans based on the fact that the Cavaliers of Virginia and the Barbadians of South Carolina were related to the English nobility and they believed the "Anglo Saxon" Yankees were inferior because they were a peasant race toiling the fields for their Norman superiors.
 
What was their justification for this belief? The higher number of immigrants in the north? I had always heard that the plantation aristocrats believed themselves to be Normans based on the fact that the Cavaliers of Virginia and the Barbadians of South Carolina were related to the English nobility and they believed the "Anglo Saxon" Yankees were inferior because they were a peasant race toiling the fields for their Norman superiors.

Correct. The 1860 showed that about 1 in 6 people in Union states were immigrants, while about 1 in 40 people in Confederate states were immigrants. If we just counted Confederate states east of the Mississippi River, then about 1 in 70 was an immigrant. A lot of plantation "aristocrats" used this to dismiss Yankees as "mongrels", just like the plantation "aristocrats" claimed to be descended from Normans and Cavaliers.
 
I know I'm a month late, but...

All that said and based on what the pre ACW leadership was talking about they would buy some powerful ironclads and try to filibuster stuff in the carribean basin. The Stonewalls are quite tasty for the day and not a lot to stop them.
Did they say anything more specific than "the Caribbean Basin"?
Because I keep thinking that the British and French might have opinions about people filibustering about in the West Indies.
 
I know I'm a month late, but...


Did they say anything more specific than "the Caribbean Basin"?
Because I keep thinking that the British and French might have opinions about people filibustering about in the West Indies.

Let's just say the Fire Eaters had some...unorthodox ideas about the South and its Golden Circle. They had the mindset that slavery must expand or die.
 
Let's just say the Fire Eaters had some...unorthodox ideas about the South and its Golden Circle. They had the mindset that slavery must expand or die.

Most southern planters only listened to Edmund Ruffin on secession, not crop rotation or soil enrichment. Cotton and tobacco were hard on the soil, so yields steadily reduced, leading to the desire for new land.
 
Did they say anything more specific than "the Caribbean Basin"?
Because I keep thinking that the British and French might have opinions about people filibustering about in the West Indies.

In the Caribbean, southern expansionists mainly focused on Cuba. They had also supported fiilbusters in northern Mexico and Central America, so the Confederates might attempt expansion there. During the Civil War, the Confederates unsuccessfully tried to get most of northern Mexico to join them.
 
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