"One is tempted to imagine that the Anglo-Norman race has received from Divine Providence a fee-simple conveyance of this planet, with the appurtenances thereunto belonging."
J.D. Nourse wrote this in his Remarks on the Past (1847).
Further, regarding Americans, Nourse says:
No one phrase was used to describe this "American" race, but everywhere it was linked firmly to its supposed historic roots; these roots were usually thought of as Caucasian, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon, and the Americans as a race were most often described as the most vigorous branch of the Anglo-Saxon people. Some nationalists, particularly those of Irish origin, preferred to think of the "American" as a distinctive race, a race in which was combined the best elements of the Caucasians. This "American" race, however, was usually given the historical attributes of the Anglo-Saxons. A more uncommon usage was that of Thomas Hart Benton, who in one speech referred to the "Celtic-Anglo-Saxon division" of the Caucasian race.
In the South there was eventually some confusion in terminology as Southerners sought to emphasize their aristocratic origins in contrast to the supposed plebeian ancestry of the Northerners. Southerners became convinced between 1815 and 1850 that they belonged to a superior race emanating from England, but some preferred to use the term Anglo-Norman rather than Anglo-Saxon. They were describing the same race, the English, but by including Norman they were making sure that their connection to aristocratic forebears was clearly delineated. Carlyle and others had made it quite clear that the Normans, like the Saxons, were a Germanic people, and that whatever the political and class struggles following the Norman Conquest there was no racial split. Anglo-Norman became most popular in the South in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.
Before 1850 Southerners were often content to use Anglo-Saxon rather than Anglo-Norman when they described the American interaction with other races. As early as 1826, Henry Clay, in discussing the Indians, used Anglo-Saxon in a specifically racial sense. He described the Indians as "essentially inferior to the Anglo-Saxon race, which were now taking their place on this continent." South Carolinian Hugh [Swinton] Legare, disappointed with France, wrote from Paris in 1832 that "I am more than ever inclined to think that liberty is an affair of idiosyncrasy, and not destined to spread very far beyond the Anglo-Saxon race, if even they keep it very much longer." A new generation of Southerners was to keep Legare's distinction between the Anglo-Saxons and the rest, his sense of malaise by stressing that the South, the Anglo-Saxons, and liberty could be preserved and enhanced in power by a vigorous policy of racial expansion."
This used to be popular belief, even down into the 20th century.
Now, of course, it's fashionable to say that Southerners are Scots-Irish unless otherwise proven. I do think it's good to notice the fact that this was not always the dominant thinking as to the origins of Southron people.
I have no problem with Scots-Irish ethnocentrism in America as long as we don't write a revised history which virtually writes Anglo-Saxons out of the picture, or which pushes them to the margins. Truth should matter, not political considerations.
Lately I've seen the claim made that 'the Scots-Irish won the American Revolution, because supposedly Scots-Irish made up half of the men who fought for our independence. I am not sure I buy this. Much of this kind of thing is too reminiscent of the assertions that immigrants built America, or that blacks/slaves built America. Every ethnic group wants to stake its claim to having 'built' or 'won' America, and this is done at the expense of the founding stock Anglo-Saxons.
