The British.The British began settling in the eastern part of North America in the 1600’s. By the time of the American Revolution (1776) the culture of the American colonists (their religion, language, government, etc.) was completely British. One could say that the British culture was the foundation of the new nation’s culture.
The New England Yankee. Different people use the word “yankee” in different meanings. For a person from the south of the United States “yankee” means a Northerner. For a foreigner “yankee” means an American. But the exact meaning of the word “yankee” is a New Englander. The peculiar character of the New England Yankee was shaped by the history and geography of the place. New England was settled in the 1600’s by Puritans. The Puritans left England because they did not agree with some teachings of the Church of England. They wanted to “purify” the religion, they had very strict rules about church services and also about the way people lived. There is a story about a sea captain who had come back from a three-year voyage and kissed his wife on their doorstep, outside their house. The puritans were indignant at such behavior and publicly punished the captain. The yankees have a reputation for being honest but shrewd, realistic, practical, untalkative, thrifty and independent. There are many stories which illustrate the realistic and untalkative character of a yankee. One story tells about a tourist who asked a yankee whether he had lived in the same village all his life. “Not yet,” answered the yankee. There is another story about a tourist who did know his way in the state of Vermont and asked a yankee for directions. “I want to go to Bennington,” he said. “I have no objections,” was the answer. Yet another story tells about a yankee from Boston, whose name was Frederick Tudor. This story illustrates the business shrewdness of the yankees. As we know, the climate in New England is cold, and in winter there is a lot of snow and ice. When Tudor was a young man, he heard somebody make a joke: “If ice were a crop, New England would be wealthy.” Tudor remembered this joke, and many years later worked out a way how to break and store up ice and send it to the south. Tudor became a very rich man. The Yankees like to speak about the special role that New England has played in United States history. The American Revolution began in New England, because the yankees were among the strongest supporters of independence. In the 19th century it was New England Yankees who led the fight against slavery in America. Unwilling immigrants Among the flood of immigrants to North America, one group came unwillingly. These were Africans, 500,000 of whom were brought over as slaves between 1619 and 1808, when importing slaves into the United States became illegal. The practice of owning slaves and their descendants continued, however, particularly in the agrarian South, where many laborers were needed to work the fields. The process of ending slavery began in April 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South, 11 of which had left the Union. On January 1, 1863, midway through the war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in those states that had seceded. Slavery was abolished throughout the United States with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the country's Constitution in 1865. Even after the end of slavery, however, American blacks were hampered by segregation and inferior education. In search of opportunity, African Americans formed an internal wave of immigration, moving from the rural South to the urban North. But many urban blacks were unable to find work; by law and custom they had to live apart from whites, in run-down neighborhoods called ghettos. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, African Americans, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used boycotts, marches, and other forms of nonviolent protest to demand equal treatment under the law and an end to racial prejudice.
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