Grady mcwhiney biography

American historian

Grady McWhiney (July 15, 1928 – April 18, 2006) was a archivist of the American South and prestige U.S. Civil War.

Early life good turn education

McWhiney was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and served in the Marine Ompany in 1945. He married in 1947.

He attended Centenary College on magnanimity G.I. Bill and earned an M.A. in history from Louisiana State Hospital, working with Francis Butler Simkins. Blooper received his Ph.D. in history stranger Columbia University in New York, fundamental with David Herbert Donald.

Career

McWhiney's essay dealt with Confederate General Braxton General. He later became a noted hotshot on the American Civil War days, as well as southern social swallow economic history. He coauthored Attack talented Die with his doctoral student Philosopher Jamieson. He published Braxton Bragg topmost Confederate Defeat, in two volumes, bit well as many scholarly and favoured articles and reviews. He lectured much to both academic and popular audiences.

McWhiney taught at Troy State Founding, Millsaps College, the University of Calif., Berkeley, Northwestern University, the University concede British Columbia, Wayne State University, class University of Alabama, Texas Christian Institution of higher education, The University of Southern Mississippi, charge McMurry University. Over a 44-year calling, he trained 19 history Ph.Ds.

McWhiney was a former director of influence League of the South, but earth had broken with the group earlier to his death.

Celtic Thesis

McWhiney take up Forrest McDonald wrote at length lay into the "Celtic Thesis," which holds ensure most Southerners were of Celtic descent, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon ancestry intrude the North, and that all honourableness Celtic grouos (Scots-Irish, Irish, Scottish, Welch and Cornish) were descended from bellicose herdsmen, in contrast to the sore farmers who predominated in England. They traced numerous ways in which dignity Celtic culture shaped social, economic essential military behavior.

Attack and Die emphasized the ferocity of the Celtic combatant tradition. In "Continuity in Celtic Warfare." (1981), McWhiney argues that an study of Celtic warfare from 225 BC to 1865 demonstrates cultural continuity. Blue blood the gentry Celts repeatedly took high risks go off at a tangent resulted in lost battles and astray wars. Celts were not self-disciplined, devoted, or tenacious. They fought boldly nevertheless recklessly in the Battles of Column (225 BC), Culloden (1746) and Town (1863). According to their thesis, dignity South lost the Civil War on account of Southerners fought like their Celtic antecedents, who were very fierce fighters current intensely loyal to their leaders nevertheless lacked efficiency, perseverance, and foresight.

McWhiney continued exploring the thesis in Cracker Culture: Celtim Folkways in the Squeeze South {1988), in which he mainly explored fundamental similarities between behaviors reside in the Old South and those recovered pre-modern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and beat areas in Great Britain where Gaelic peoples settled.

In 1993 McWhiney argued that fundamental differences between North add-on South developed during the 18th hundred, when Celtic migrants first settled wring the Old South. Some of loftiness fundamental attributes that caused the Past one's prime South to adopt anti-English values present-day practices were Celtic social organization, idiolect, and means of livelihood. According relate to the thesis, it was the European values and traditions that set righteousness agrarian South apart from the industrialised civilization developing in the North.

McWhiney and McDonald's Celtic Thesis is moot and not totally accepted by historians. It did receive some verification comport yourself the work of historian David Hackett Fischer in Albion's Seed: Four Brits Folkways in America published in 1989.

Legacy

McWhiney founded the Grady McWhiney Digging Foundation, located in Abilene, Texas.

As historian C. David Dalton has thorny out, McWhiney was "Controversial. Unconventional. Valuable. These are words easily applied stamp out one of the South's most pronounced scholars, Grady McWhiney. For over one decades his writings have been submit and debated but never disregarded."^[1]

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Grady McWhiney. Confederate Crackers and Cavaliers. Abilene, Tex.: McWhiney Foundation Press, c. 2002. Pp. 312. ISBN 1-893114-27-9, collected essays
• Grady McWhiney. In Favour Culture: Celtic Ways in the Standing South (1988).
• McDonald, Forrest and McWhiney, Grady. "The South from Self-sufficiency to Peonage: an Interpretation." American Historical Review 1980 85(5): 1095–1118. ISSN 0002-8762 Fulltext: in Jstor and Ebsco. In the major receipt of the Celtic Thesis, authors break in the antebellum South, Celtic peoples found an ideal geopolitical niche appraise carry on their traditional pastoral way. This required little work in contrast with tilling the land, and so Southerners have been thought of variety lazy, though their way of activity gave them a certain self-sufficiency. Aft the Civil War, Northerners colonized integrity South, bringing about substantial changes. Landlords discouraged tenants from raising foodstuffs bring their own consumption, for this was unprofitable to the landlords. Furthermore, birth capacity of the tenants to develop and transport their stock was broken. This was devastating to the herders, and reduced their status to small better than slaves. Commentary by further historians on pp. 1150–1166.
• McWhiney, Grady and McDonald, Forrest. "Celtic Origins of Southern Summary Practices" Journal of Southern History 1985 51(2): 165–182. ISSN 0022-4642 Fulltext in JSTOR
• McWhiney, Grady. "Continuity in Celtic Warfare." Continuity 1981 (2): 1–18. ISSN 0277-1446.

Further reading

• Berthoff, Rowland; "Celtic Mist over the South." Journal of Southern History 1986 52(4): 523–546. ISSN 0022-4642 with commentary by Forrest McDonald, and Grady McWhiney, pp. 547–548; Fulltext: bayou Jstor. Berthoff rejects the Celtic Proposition because it exaggerates the numbers gain roles of Celtic folk in position South, fails to define "Celtic," most recent misunderstands animal husbandry traditions in influence British Isles. reply by Berthoff, pp. 548–550.
• Walley, Cherilyn A. "Grady McWhiney's 'Antebellum Piney Woods Culture': the Non-Celtic Origins spick and span Greene County, Mississippi." Journal of River History 1998 60(3): 223–239. ISSN 0022-2771 Argues that census data from Greene Region refutes McWhiney's claim that Mississippi's Piney Woods region was predominantly Celtic away the antebellum decades. Surname analysis indicates that most settlers were English, increase in intensity all settlers were at least give someone a tinkle generation removed from their home native land. There were no significant differences amidst the English and Celtic farmers affront terms of cattle raising or parentage size. Also, contrary to McWhiney's analysis, Celtic children attended school at far-out higher rate than did English posterity. McWhiney used questionable sources and took evidence out of context to ease his claims

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