Our blood was as much mixed a century ago as it is now.

No State now has a smaller proportion of English blood than New York or Pennsylvania had in 1775.

Even in New England, where the English stock was purest, there was a certain French and Irish mixture; in Virginia there were Germans in addition.
In the other colonies, taken as a whole, it is not probable that much over half of the blood was English; Dutch, French, German, and Gaelic communities abounded.
But all were being rapidly fused into one people.

As the Celt of Cornwall and the Saxon of Wessex are now alike Englishmen, so in 1775 Hollander and Huguenot, whether in New York or South Carolina, had become Americans, undistinguishable from the New Englanders and Virginians, the descendants of the men who followed Cromwell or charged behind Rupert.

When the great western movement began we were already a people by ourselves.