[Ads-l] On "Tar Heels" in general and North Carolinians as "Tar Heels"

Andy Bach afbach at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jan 7 22:19:47 UTC 2020


I'm just guessing, but from that NY ballroom entry denied (if he had tar on
his heel) and the Britishism "touch of the tar brush"; is it, as with Van
Buren, an implication of mixed race heritage?

http://www.southerncultures.org/article/why-north-carolinians-are-tar-heels-a-new-explanation/


has a number of interesting stories, alas all the references are not
included in the on-line article.

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 3:52 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have not explored this topic before; hence, this citation may
> already be known, or it may be irrelevant.
> In 1840 a rally was held in Burlington, Vermont supporting the
> political ticket of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. The incumbent U.S.
> President Martin Van Buren was criticized with the phrase "Tar on your
> heel!"
>
> Date: July 21, 1840
> Newspaper: Vermont Gazette
> Newspaper Location: Burlington, Vermont
> Article: (Description of log-cabin convention at Burlington, Vermont
> on June 27, 1840)
> Quote Page 2, Column 3
> Database: Newspapers.com
> https://www.newspapers.com/image/519608297/?terms=%22tar%22
>
> [Begin excerpt - please double check]
> . . . there issued from the throat of
> that noble young man such hoarse
> cries as these--"hurrah for Gen. Tip!
> hurrah for Old Canoe! Go it, you
> Cider! Yi-i-ip you long tails! D--n
> Van Buren! Tar on your heel! hur-
> rah!" and other such patriotic and
> inspiring cries.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 12:39 PM Bonnie Taylor-Blake
> <b.taylorblake at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > We've discussed the origin of "Tar Heel" several times here, including
> > antebellum instances of its use in various parts of the South. That the
> > term existed before the Civil War permits us to discard a few legendary
> > etymologies tied to the Civil War.
> >
> > Several years ago historian Bruce Baker wrote a remarkable essay on how
> the
> > epithet "Tar Heel" came to be applied to North Carolinians specifically.
> I
> > found it soon after it was published and, while I find flaws in the
> latter
> > part of his argument, I see a lot of value in his "Why North Carolinians
> > Are Tar Heels: A New Explanation" [1].
> >
> > The most astonishing part (to me, at least) is that Baker makes clear the
> > connection to the presumably older (and previously unknown to me, am I
> > alone?) "Rosin Heel," a nickname even noted by Mencken (!) in 1949 [2].
> >
> > Here's an early example from ca. 1825, from a source [3] both Mencken and
> > Baker cite.
> >
> > "[West Florida] possesses in its swamps a considerable quantity of live
> > oak, and masts and spars enough for all the navies in the world. It is
> > capable of furnishing inexhaustible supplies of pitch, tar, &c. The high
> > grass, which grows every where among the pine trees, opens an immense
> range
> > for cattle. There are some tolerable tracts of land along the rivers; but
> > generally the land is low, swampy, and extremely poor. The people, too,
> are
> > poor and indolent, devoted to raising cattle, hunting, and drinking
> > whiskey. They are a wild race, with but little order or morals among
> them;
> > they are generally denominated 'Bogues,' and call themselves 'rosin
> heels.'"
> >
> > Baker shares other examples of antebellum "Rosin Heels" used to denote
> > marginalized whites of the Piney Woods across the South. As he suspects
> of
> > "Rosin Heels,"
> >
> > "Poor workers in the hot climates of the Piney Woods probably went
> barefoot
> > during the warm months when rosin was being collected, and thus very
> likely
> > collected a fair amount of it on their heels. [...] The rosin heels are
> > workers, but they are not working terribly hard. Like the poor residents
> of
> > poor lands everywhere, the improvidence of the land is transferred as a
> > personality trait to those who inhabit it."
> >
> > For me, then, the existence of "Rosin Heels" perfectly helps buttress an
> > old proposed etymology "Tar Heels," which suggests tar accumulating on
> bare
> > feet. I should stop there, but ...
> >
> >
> > Trickier for Baker is how North Carolinians specifically became known as
> > "Tar Heels." I think he forces a more complicated (though interesting)
> > explanation where a simpler one is perfectly adequate. (What follows is
> > long and likely not new to most of you.)
> >
> > As we list-members know, the so-far earliest known appearance of "Tar
> Heel"
> > dates to 1846 [4]. At the time of writing Baker presumably was unaware of
> > this very early "Tar Heel" used with reference to a class of poor whites
> > across the South, apparently without specificity to North Carolinians:
> >
> > "There are at this moment at least as many poor whites in the slave
> states
> > as there are slaves, who are hardly less miserable than the slaves
> > themselves. They have no weight in society, grow up in ignorance, are not
> > permitted to vote and are tolerated as an evil, of which the slaveholder
> > would gladly be rid.  They are never spoken of without some contemptuous
> > epithet.  "Red shanks," "Tar heels," &c., are the names by which they are
> > commonly known. The slaveholders look with infinite contempt upon these
> > poor men -- a feeling which they cherish for poor men every where."
> >
> > ("Red shanks," it turns out, was in place in west Florida by 1840 [5].)
> >
> > It's possible that there are still earlier instances of "Tar Heels,"
> > perhaps in place in the Piney Woods of the lower South and co-existing
> with
> > "Rosin Heels," and that we just haven't yet found them.
> >
> > Baker acknowledges North Carolina's role in turpentine production in the
> > 1840s, that the state was known as "the Tar, Pitch, and Turpentine State"
> > before the war, and mentions a September, 1861 passage that includes a
> > mention of "tar boiler" (as an occupation) among North Carolina
> prisoners,
> > but he hasn't presented that residents of the state were called "Tar
> > Boilers" by 1845. (Further, North Carolina was called simply "the Old Tar
> > State" by 1853.)
> >
> > For me, then, the blending of a generalized form of "Tar Heels" to denote
> > poor white Southerners (likely influenced by "Rosin Heels") and "Tar-"
> > bearing epithets with specific reference to North Carolina and its
> > inhabitants is sufficient for the branding of North Carolinians as "Tar
> > Heels" by, say, the early days of the war, when North Carolina soldiers
> > encountered the epithet directed against them (specifically). Of course,
> > it's possible that North Carolina civilians were inclined to be dubbed
> "Tar
> > Heels" before the 1860s simply because of the state's connection to tar.
> > (By the way, the earliest "tar-heel" used as a qualifier for a North
> > Carolinian that I've found appeared in a California newspaper in 1858
> [7].
> > This time it's for a black North Carolinian.)
> >
> > Part of Baker's thesis for how North Carolinians became "Tar Heels"
> hinges,
> > in fact, on early associations of "tar" with blacks and with expressions
> > involving blacks, with a later tinge of meaning signaling "deceit and
> > treachery" and evilness. (This is where we part.) Consequently, he
> argues,
> > "Tar Heels" may have been used by citizens/soldiers from other (Southern)
> > states toward citizens/soldiers of North Carolina as an allusion to the
> > state's sympathies for the Union cause.
> >
> > In support of this theory, he gives us the earliest examples he had found
> > of "Tar Heel": the antebellum "Tar Heels" he discovered involved
> > descriptions of southern blacks (not living in North Carolina). He also
> has
> > instances of (white) North Carolinians described in terms of swarthy,
> > smokey, and dirty appearances. And yet, while many of the antebellum uses
> > of "Tar Heel" certainly are applied to blacks (including some he doesn't
> > mention), we have examples from immediately before the Civil War of
> whites
> > (presumably) not from North Carolina who chose to sign off as "Tar-heel"
> on
> > letters to the editors of Southern newspapers, just as other letter
> writers
> > had signed off as "Rosin Heels" nearly three decades earlier [8].
> >
> > Moreover, Baker points out that "[f]rom the early 1840s (if not earlier)
> > white Americans, in the North and the South, began to use the expression
> > 'tar on a nigger's heel' or some close variation, often in connection to
> > politics" and offers examples for why "tar" may have applied to North
> > Carolinians in political contexts. But we have an 1840 usage [9],
> > presumably by a white writer, of "we wear tar on our heels" with
> reference
> > to white Democrats in Franklin County, Mississippi. I assume Baker didn't
> > see this.
> >
> > A very early usage (presumably also not seen by Baker) with application
> to
> > North Carolinians specifically appears in the diary of Lt. William B.A.
> > Lowrance [10]. (We've discussed this before, too.) On 6 February 1863
> > Lowrance, then a Second Lieutenant in North Carolina's 46th Regiment,
> > recorded coming to an area of the state now identified as somewhere in
> > Onslow or Pender Counties. (Lowrance was from Rowan County, in the
> rolling
> > foothills of the western North Carolina Piedmont, so this very eastern
> > region of the state may have been new to him.)
> >
> > "Great deal of rains which make the water rise all over the country
> nearby.
> > This is a low sandy country. The land is poor and the inhabitants
> gineraly
> > they farm [?]. The country is interspersed with cypress swamps and duck
> > Ponds. I know now what is meant by the Piney woods region of N.C. and the
> > idea occurs to me that it is no wonder we are called "Tar Heels." Very
> > little wheat raised about here the inhabitants live on corn meal sweet
> > Potatoe Cabage &c. Game is plenty. Although this is among the first parts
> > of the state settled by the colonists yet it presents a wild western [?]
> > appearance."
> >
> > Lowrance's description reminds me of that ca. 1825 description of "Rosin
> > Heels" in the Piney Woods of the Florida panhandle (above) and the 1846
> > reference to "Tar Heels" then living across the South (above). In
> > underscoring the hardscrabble existence of the marginalized in the Piney
> > Woods of North Carolina, he is clearly aware of an old meaning of "Tar
> > Heels" to denote poor residents of Southern pine forests.
> >
> > (BTW, Baker pushes the earliest use of "Tar Heels" toward North Carolina
> > soldiers to June, 1862, but I have a thought about that, too [11].)
> >
> > On balance, despite my argument with parts of it, Baker's essay was a
> > revelation:  it introduced me to "Rosin Heels," nailed down for me at
> least
> > how "Tar Heels" got their "Heels," and allowed me to agree with the
> > long-held theory that "Tar" simply refers to a product of the North
> > Carolina Piney Woods, and for all that I'm grateful.
> >
> > -- Bonnie
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > 1. Southern Cultures 21(4): 81-94, Winter 2015. Link to PDF at
> > https://muse.jhu.edu/article/608417/pdf (subscription may be required).
> > Free HTML version, without references, is at
> >
> http://www.southerncultures.org/article/why-north-carolinians-are-tar-heels-a-new-explanation/
> > (contact
> > me off list if you'd like the references).
> >
> > 2. "Some Opprobrius Nicknames," American Speech 24(1): 25-30 (February,
> > 1949).
> >
> > 3. From _Recollections of the last ten years, passed in occasional
> > residences and journeyings in the valley of the Mississippi : from
> > Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the
> > Spanish frontier, in a series of letters to the Rev. James Flint, of
> Salem,
> > Massachusetts_. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1826. (Full text available at
> >
> https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081813309&view=1up&seq=327
> > .)
> >
> > 4.
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-April/089441.html
> >
> > 5. "Florida," The Democrat and Herald [Wilmington, Ohio], 10 April 1840,
> p.
> > 2.
> >
> > 6. "Another Carolina Joke," The Times-Picayune [New Orleans], 11 November
> > 1842, p. 2.
> >
> > 7. An anecdote recounts a fight that breaks out between two blacks and
> > includes this bit of dialogue:
> >
> > "'Dont yah call dis er'n a Down-easter,' said Scip, 'yah mis'ble
> dirt-eatin
> > Norf C'lina tar-heel.'"
> >
> > From "Carrying the War into Africa," The San Andreas [California]
> > Independent, 6 February 1858, p. 4.
> >
> > 8. For example, a presumably white letter-writer in Philadelphia,
> clearly a
> > transplant, wrote back home to the editor of The [Baton Rouge] Daily
> Comet
> > on 12 August 1855 (p. 3), referring to Livingston Parish (Louisiana) and
> > "the primitive state of society in the Piney-Woods," and signing off as
> > "TAR-HEEL." Further, a writer to The Cassville [Georgia] Standard used
> the
> > name "TAR HEEL DEMOCRAT" on his letter to the editor published on 1
> August
> > 1860 (p. 2). ("OLD ROSIN HEELS" is how a writer of a letter to the editor
> > of The Natchez [Mississippi] Weekly Courier had signed off on 30
> September
> > 1831, p. 3.)
> >
> > 9.
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-August/092451.html
> >
> > 10. http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p15012coll11/id/144 [pp.
> > 17-18]. See also Fred Shapiro's ADS-L message:
> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-April/089445.html.
> >
> > 11. A minor point on pinning down when North Carolinians were first
> called
> > "Tar Heels."
> >
> > Baker mentions that "[t]he earliest usage I have found of North Carolina
> > soldiers being called 'Tar Heels' comes from the Seven Days' Battle in
> late
> > June, 1862 near Manchester, Virginia." Although a dating of first use of
> > the epithet to North Carolinians to 1862 is certainly possible, I note
> that
> > his example comes from an anecdote published in 1867. (And it's unclear
> to
> > me, at least, whether in this instance the "Tar-Heel" was a Virginian or
> a
> > North Carolinian.)
> >
> > We have evidence that "Tar Heels," at least as applied to North Carolina
> > troops, was in place in Virginia a mere 18 days after Lowrance's 6
> February
> > 1863 usage (above). On 24 February 1963 an unnamed correspondent wrote
> from
> > the camp of the 6th North Carolina, then settled near Port Royal,
> Virginia,
> > and documented the outcome of a skirmish between Union and Confederate
> > troops on the Rappahannock.  He mentioned that Lawton’s Georgia Brigade
> > taunted North Carolina troops as "being 'Tar Heels' till the next big
> > snow'; the account was published in The North Carolina Standard on 18
> March
> > 1863.
> >
> > FWIW, Lt. Col. James M. Ray, writing in April 1901 on North Carolina's
> 60th
> > Regiment's  participation in the Battle of Murfreesboro, recalls General
> > William Preston, a Kentuckian, on January 1, 1863 referring to members of
> > the regiment as "you Tar Heels," though this is obviously merely an
> > instance remembered nearly 40 years after the fact. (From Histories of
> the
> > Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, in the Great War
> > 1861-'65, Vol. 3, ed. Walter Clark, Published by the State of North
> > Carolina, 1901:
> > https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hn48hq&view=2up&seq=566.)
> >
> > I suspect 1863 is a bit late, so Baker's suggestion of 1862 or earlier is
> > plausible, though it would be nice to have a contemporaneous cite.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 

a

Andy Bach,
afbach at gmail.com
608 658-1890 cell
608 261-5738 wk

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