I found the following quote by Nicholas Davis, Confederate Chaplain of the 1st Texas Infantry, to be interesting. He defines for us the meaning of the New Englanders’ nickname, “Yankee”:
The popular name for the citizens of New England. This is what Webster says it means, “…a name for the people of New England” and, as their history is well-known to the civilized world, the whole world will understand us. The word extends to all their ten thousand schemes of deception and fraud and comprehends their every act of lying and stealing… from the days of Washington to the present hour… in all their political, legislative, executive, commercial, civil, moral, literary, sacred, profane, theological, and diabolical history.
The word Yankee when thus applied means meddlesome, impudent, insulant, pompous, boastful, unkind, ungrateful, unjust, knavish, false, deceitful, cowardly, swindling, thieving, robbing, brutal, and murderous. This Yankee country has given birth to Socialism, Mormonism, Spiritualism, and Abolitionism with every other devilism which has cursed the nation of unionism.
