The American Melting Pot and The Electorate

This was first published in March 2013

The United States has really always been a nation of minorities. These minorities have "usually" joined together to form the nation, although the process hasn't always been pretty. The original American states were a mixture of ethnic and nationality groups,* with a fairly substantial Dutch presence in New York (originally a Dutch possession), a German element in many places, especially Pennsylvania,** a substantial English presence in most of the former colonies, especially in New England and the mid Atlantic, a smaller Scottish and Welsh presence; a substantial Scots-Irish presence in many places, especially in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North and South Carolina.*** Time only added to these numbers, as Europeans flocked to the U.S. in the 1800s and about half of the 1900s, although the variety of people expanded, as Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Swedes, Portuguese, Jews (often of Russian nationality)****, Hungarians, Rumanians, Basques, and others came in fairly high numbers as immigrants. Not only that, the other side of the world provided plenty of immigrants too, in the 1800s especially, Chinese, who formed Chinese communities, not only in the western part of the country, but also in the east, as they settled throughout the country. As the U.S. expanded westward, the number of states grew, as did the inclusion of ethnic minorities already present in some of the newly acquired territories, such as substantial Hispanic populations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as well as a number of people of French background, especially in Louisiana. 

There were also hundreds of thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa held as slaves (they could not vote), primarily in southern states, where they were used as cheap labor, literally slave labor, generally on large plantations. Even in the early decades of American independence slavery in northern states was limited, as laws in these states began to phase out the practice of owning slaves. This split between north and south widened so much and was so contentious, it ended with southern states trying to leave the Union, which resulted in the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued the "Emancipation Proclamation," freeing America's slaves, an act confirmed by the defeat of the Confederacy in the war. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution just after the Civil War helped form the legal basis for former slaves to vote, but at that time, the South was under Reconstruction; that is, occupation by Federal troops. When Reconstruction ended not long thereafter, southern states began to pass laws to restrict black American voting, often under the guise of a poll tax, the non payment of which deprived a person of the right to vote. Not only that, black voters were often threatened, beaten, or even killed, if they tried to vote. In those times, black Americans were almost exclusively Republicans, while white southerners of all income levels were just as exclusively Democrats, as they opposed the party of Lincoln, the Republicans.

Another group that gradually became a minority was the vast indigenous Native American population (initially, of course, they were the majority, although they were spread out). Over time, "undoubtedly" a good deal of that population simply was absorbed into the general population, although determining a number is pretty much impossible, as association of white Americans with "Indians" was often prohibited, or at least frowned upon by society. So if your great, great grandparent was involved with a Native American, which resulted in a child, they probably didn't run out and tell everyone in sight, or ANYONE in sight. The same was true of white association with black Americans, as the cases of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond have demonstrated, as both fathered children with black women. Obviously Thurmond didn't pass out cigars at the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, although he used race as a political weapon for decades. Anyway, something around a million people still inhabit America's hundreds of "Indian" reservations, although most people who term themselves as full or partial Native Americans live outside of reservations.

Then there was America's largest minority, certainly now a majority, WOMEN. They only got to first cast ballots in the election of 1920!!!    

In Part Two, where is the U.S. on voting rights now? Will we go back to excluding legal residents from voting? Obviously, some would like to do just that.

* The actual ethnic and nationality composition of the original states cannot be completely certain, but immigration records available from ports of entry, and overseas records of people leaving for America, plus early land and court records, give what is likely a good picture of what early America looked like.

** The so called "Pennsylvania Dutch" were/are really Germans, largely, but not exclusively, from a region around the Rhine River in western Germany known as the Palatinate (Heidelberg is one of the main cities), who came to America mainly in the late 1600s. The German name for themselves being "Deutsche," with dialect variations, like "Deitsch" and "Teitsch," the then American Colonists pronounced the term as "Dutch." This association with "Dutch" was further reinforced by the fact that a number of the new arrivals had traveled the Rhine River into Holland (the Netherlands) where they then boarded ships for America. Their speech came to be called "Pennsylvania Dutch," or "Pennsylvania German," an amalgamation of Upper German dialects from that general area of Germany, which then also included Alsace (on the western side of the Rhine, but now part of France), and part of the German area of Switzerland. For a little more on Alsace, see my article:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/11/german-question-part-fifty-five.html

*** Scots-Irish, often rendered as "Scotch-Irish" in America, were the people who came from what is now Northern Ireland, or Ulster, primarily during the 1700s. These people generally descend from Protestant Scots and northern Englishmen who were encouraged by King James I in the early 1600s to migrate to the general area of northern Ireland to settle on lands confiscated from Irish nobles (Catholics). The idea was, this would gradually bind more and more of Ireland to the crown and to Protestantism. King James was a Scot, and prior to his ascending the English throne, he was known as King James VI of Scotland. The confiscated Irish lands were often taken over by wealthy English and Scottish landowners and the "Scots-Irish" settlers worked for them. Tough economic times and domination by the landowners saw a couple of hundred thousand Scots-Irish emigrate to the American colonies, with more coming after the founding of the United States.

**** Until the end of World War One, Russia included a large segment of Poland, including Warsaw, as well as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and parts of what is now Rumania. All of these areas had fairly large numbers of Jews who were often persecuted (even violently) by so called Christians in these areas. Primarily in the latter part of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s, Jews who could, left these areas, with a fairly large number coming to the U.S. Some, however, migrated to other parts of Europe, where later they or their descendants were murdered in large numbers when the Nazis controlled much of Europe. Some wisely got out before the massacre started, again with many coming to America, as did some of the survivors in the postwar era. 
 
WORD HISTORY:
Major-This word goes back to Indo European "megh/magh," which had the notion of "great, large." This gave its Latin offspring "magnus," with the same meanings, which then produced "maior," a comparative form; as in, "big>bigger," or "large>larger." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "maiour," before the modern version. Latin "maior" was also used as a noun to mean "an elder," and from that meaning came     "high ranking official or senior officer," rendered as "major," during the Middle Ages, which was taken by French for a military officer. This was then borrowed by English during the 1600s. A verb form developed in American English, circa 1900,  meaning "to take a specific course of study in college, to specialize in a profession or subject;" as in, "to major in business management" or "to major in English." German also borrowed the military rank "major," with the same spelling, but basically pronounced.as "mah-your."