Wilson on the Yankee
Thomas Allen
In The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma (Columbia: Stonewell Publishing, 2016), Clyde N. Wilson describes the Yankee and explains how and why Yankees are the cause of nearly all of America’s problems. What follows is a synopsis of his book.
Before 1850–1860, Southerners were considered the norm in America, and Yankees were considered abnormal and a peculiar people. Following Lincoln’s War, Yankees became the norm, and Southerners became abnormal and a peculiar people. Moreover, Yankee propaganda has been so effective that most Americans now believe that the Yankees are the real founders of America and its institutions.
Philosophically, Southerners followed, and many continue to follow, the Jeffersonian branch of the Founding Fathers, which was the majority, while Yankees followed, and continue to follow, the Hamiltonian branch, which was the minority. Jefferson and his followers advocated the dispersal and decentralization of political and economic power. Consequently, they promoted a small, limited government, free markets, and free trade. Thus, the Jeffersonians believed “that the federal government was one of specific and limited authority explicit in the Constitution.” (p. 78) On the other hand, Hamilton and his followers advocated the concentration and centralization of political and economic power. Consequently, they promoted a powerful central government and a mercantile economy with government-business partnerships. Accordingly, the Hamiltonians considered “the federal government as a tool, the powers and activities of which were to be stretched and expanded at every opportunity, and the Constitution as a spring-board of power that was to be reinterpreted at will.” (p. 79) (For more on the differences between Jefferson and Hamilton, see “Statists Versus Libertists” by Thomas Allen.)
Yankees, who seek power and plunder, dominate the Northeast (New England, New York, and New Jersey), the Upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and northern Ohio), Minnesota, and the Pacific Coast (California, Oregon, and Washington). However, many people in the North are not true Yankees, although many have been Yankeefied. (Unfortunately, many Southerners have also been Yankeefied.) True Yankees are descendants of the Puritan New Englanders (and the fugitives of the failed Revolution of 1848, who were easily grafted into Yankeedom).
(Fugitive socialists, communists, anarchists, and other radicals who fled Europe following the failed Revolution of 1848 reinforced the Yankees. Mostly, they settled in the Upper Midwest, where Yankees dominated. These fugitives wanted revolution and national unification — Yankee goals. Their ideology melded well with the Yankee ideology.
Likewise, most of the nineteenth-century immigrants settled in the North. As they knew nothing about American history, the political system, and the founding, they were easy victims of Yankee propaganda that persuaded them to support the Yankee agenda.)
According to Wilson, Yankees can be recognized by “their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around.” (p. 1) Additionally, Yankees are noted for their “fanaticism, and desire to lord it over the rest of us Americans — politically, economically, and culturally.” (p. 13) They are also known for their “pushiness, religious hypocrisy, and sharp trading.” (p. 19) “The Yankees are contemptuous of good manners, boastful, ever ready to cast away traditions for the newest idea, and see making money as the chief object of life. Equality and majority rule for them should determine everything — in society and culture as well as before the law.” (p. 20) If they can make money oppressing poorer citizens, they will oppress the poor. Making money is of utmost importance to Yankees. (One may notice the similarities between Yankees and stereotypical Jews.)
Yankees believe that their manners and customs are more enlightened and their intelligence and culture are superior. While extolling charity, they are parsimonious. Although they are (or were) religious fanatics, they are blackest-hearted hypocrites. “They are agitators and schemers, braggarts and deceivers, swindlers and extortions, and yet pretend to Godliness, truth, purity and humanity.” (p. 74) Before Anglo-Saxons became persona non grata, Yankees saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons, with all their virtues, and as superior to everyone else. All other Americans were lesser people. Southerners were the most depraved and had been corrupted and enervated by slavery — and even today, most still have this view of Southerners. Yankees consider themselves to be the only Americans who matter. Furthermore, they believe that they are the only real Americans.
Although Yankees have abandoned everything good in their religion, they are still convinced that “they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image.” (pp. 1-2)
When the United States were formed under the Constitution of 1788, Yankees “regarded the new federal government: as an instrument to be used for their own purposes. “ (p. 5) However, Southerners saw the United States as a union of mutual cooperation.
Moreover, Yankees gave America the concept or doctrine of “the shining City upon the hill.” From a Christian perspective, this doctrine is heresy. Yet it has been the guiding force behind the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States. As a result, the United States seek to remake the world into the image of Yankeedom and to turn every human into a Yankee.
Throughout the decades, Yankees have sought to eradicate various evils from the United States. These evils include “liquor, tobacco, the Catholic Church, the Masonic order, meat-eating, [and] marriage.” (p. 10) Today, except for prohibition and possibly Masonry, they still want to rid America of these evils. Out of Yankeedom have come Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, John Humphrey Noyes free-love colony, the first feminist convention, prohibition, socialist experiments, abolitionism, and John Brown and his terrorism.
Yankees turned education “from creating good men and women to creating obedient tools.” (p. 26) Using the Republican Party, Yankees sought to create an educational “system on the statist, militarized models of Europe.” (p. 28) A “federally-controlled, universal, compulsory public schools were needed” (p. 39) to keep Blacks where they belonged — in the South.
Also, the United States have had two modes of warfare: the Southern mode of Washington and Lee and the Yankee mode of Grant and Sherman. The Southern mode “emphasizes skill, enterprise, and courage in achieving objectives with an economy of force and strives to keep warfare as honourable [sic] as possible.” (p. 27) In contrast, the Yankee mode “relies on marshalling [sic] overwhelming materiel to crush a weak opponent, heedless of the cost in life and taxes, and rewards its commanders appropriately.” The Yankee mode is “self-righteous and recognizes no ends except boastful triumph.” (p. 27)
Yankees are notorious for spewing slander and hatred toward Southerners because Southerners are the greatest obstacle to Yankee domination. They hate Southerners because Southerners oppose the pride and profits of the Yankees. Southerners, led by Jeffersonian and Jacksonian republicans, defeated the New England leadership and mostly thwarted the advancement of the Yankee agenda of controlling the United States until 1860, after which they gained control of the country and still control it.
Moreover, the South stood in the way of the Yankee vision of the American Union, i.e., “powerful unified ‘nation’ with a unique holy mission.” (p. 86) Therefore, the South had to be conquered and turned into subservient provinces, preferably without Southerners.
Furthermore, Yankees cannot tolerate contented people. That is another reason that Yankees hate Southerners, who are generally contented. This has been a primary reason that Yankees tried to genocide Southerners with Lincoln’s War and Reconstruction (both the First Reconstruction and the Second Reconstruction).
Another reason that they hate the South is that “Yankees have no civilization — only money and ideology.” (p. 15) However, the South has a real culture about which books, poems, and songs are written. Yankeedom does not.
Nevertheless, Yankees need the South and Southerners. Without them, Yankees would wither away for the want of someone to abuse and to feel superior to (see “Yankees Need the South” by Thomas Allen).
Since the ratification of the Constitution, and even before, Yankees have caused most of America’s problems. They are descendants of New England Puritans. Puritans settled in New England and began erecting “a shining City upon the hill.” This City would be an example for all mankind of a superior society. After they abandoned Christianity, the Puritan Yankees not only kept their overdeveloped righteousness, but they also exaggerated it.
With Lincoln’s War and Reconstruction, “[t]he North sought to convert a Union made for brotherhood and mutual benefit into a ‘nation’ which they would dominate in their own interest.” (p. 59) This goal they accomplished. From the beginning of the union formed by the Constitution of 1788, Yankees have been working to achieve this goal. From the beginning, Yankees “opposed every good measure under the U.S. government and clamoured [sic] for special privileges for themselves.” (p. 59). Until recent decades, Yankees have been proponents of high tariffs on imports to force Americans to buy Yankee-manufactured products. Thus, they increased their wealth by reducing everyone else’s standard of living.
The South was preventing Yankees from perfecting the American people, i.e., forming them into the image of a Yankee. Therefore, the South had to be conquered and Southerners genocided. By the 1830s, “many Yankees were discontented people looking for something or someone to blame for the uneasiness they felt as their society suffered through religious breakdown, industrialisation [sic] with its accompanying dislocation and periodic unemployment, and a flood of non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Protestant immigrants.” (p. 70) Consequently, they blamed the South and slavery for their problems. After all, Yankees knew that “Southerners were an alien, lazy, violent people, lacking the sober virtues of Northerners.” (p. 70)
(For more on Yankees, see “The Yankee,” “The Puritan Yankee,” and “Cusson’s Description of the Yankee” by Thomas Allen.)
Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.
