This article is about the Americans as an ethnic group. For information about residents or nationals of America, see America.


The American people are a relatively young nation of 300 years, who identify ethnically with the name American and the United States Census Bureau has tallied the population of this ethnic group, county by county. Despite the youth of this people, they are sometimes referred to as Old Stock Americans, in contrast to immigrants whose nationality is American.

Today Americans are people of mixed ancestry. While most Americans still trace their ancestry to Eruope, the arrival of many new immigrants from Lating America and Asia has made the American people more diverse.<ref name="Dealing with Diversity"> </ref> Mexican-Americans, for example are now the sith most populous ethinc group in the United States, ahead of Italian-Americans who constituted roughly 5.6% of the population's ancesrty. Overall 15.2% of American reported being of German ancestry, while 10.8% were of Irish ancestry, 8.8% traced their ancestry to Africa and 8.7% of Americans reported being the ancestors of British immigrants.<ref name="US ancestries, US Census Bureau"> </ref>

This people owes their existence to the majority Protestant British colonization of the Americas, Scottish colonization of the Americas, Welsh colonization of the Americas and minority Protestant French colonization of the Americas. Their transformation to Americans was through the multilaterally assembled independence of 13 states, a New World version of the Aeneid. Indeed, the early American Republic was fond of Phrygian Troy and the Classical antiquity culture which resurfaced in Neoclassicism. Many early politicians were interested in Deism and Freemasonry during the Age of Enlightenment, while others joined the Great Awakening or Unitarianism.

Huguenots were absorbed in the British and Irish social collective that adopted the "American" ethnicity, as a melting pot of four kingdoms that came together under the former UK House of Stuart. An armorial symbol of these ethnic cultures can be found here, in the Senate of Virginia Seal: [68] (a similar coat of arms exists in the Coat of arms of Canada).

The original bounds of this people's nation was south of Canada, north of Spanish Florida and east of the Mississippi River. Although originally confined to this region, the Louisiana Purchase led to Americans moving into the central part of the river's watershed but parts of Louisiana were already annexed by individualist and competing 13 colonies/states, after defying the Royal Proclamation of 1763, yet before the Federal Government was created by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Americans eventually moved on from Louisiana to Oregon Country on the Oregon Trail, after the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Fort Astoria is where the first commercial venture was made on the Pacific coast. Although Americans annexed Spanish (Florida and the Southwestern United States), Russian (Alaska) and Hawaiian territories, the population of Americans in these areas is lower than throughout former British and French cessions.

Americans are mostly associated with the Southern United States and the defunct Confederate States of America since this social collective was and still is not a usually receptive party to immigration to the United States. A secondary sector of Americans live in New England who descend from Mayflower passengers and even they considered secession in the Hartford Convention, apparently uneasy about the Mid-Atlantic distance between them and Southrons. Each and every President to represent a new political party had come from either of the said two regions: Independent George Washington was first American President from Virginia; Federalist Party 's John Adams from Massachusetts; Democratic-Republican Party 's Thomas Jefferson from Virginia; Democratic Party 's Andrew Jackson from South Carolina; Whig Party 's William Henry Harrison from Virginia; Republican Party 's Abraham Lincoln from Kentucky.

Protestantism is the major Christian background of Americans, Baptists specifically accounting for the majority.[69]

Immigration has mostly been courted by Dutch and German colonial descendents in the Mid-Atlantic states, who draw more upon the New Netherland and New Sweden colonies and Continental Europe as opposed to British North America or the British Empire. Despite their own Protestantism, most immigrants were members of the Roman Catholic Church or of the Jewish faith.

Related terms are African American (former slave subjects of the American people) and American Indian, a frontier people also domestically resident in America during the time of 1776 or later territorial acquisitions during Manifest Destiny--the quest of Americans to fulfill their colonial charters, which was to reach Sir Francis Drake's New Albion.



<gallery>Image:American1346.gif|ethnic Americans</gallery>

See also

Albion's Seed

References

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External links

Census Ancestry Changes Reflect Changing America

American Ethnic Geography: A Cultural Geography of the United States and Canada

Largest Religious Groups in the United States of America