Editing Yankee (section)

===Yankee politics===
After 1800, Yankees spearheaded most American reform movements, including those for the abolition of slavery, temperance in use of alcohol, increase in women's political rights, and improvement in women's education. [[Emma Willard]] and [[Mary Lyon]] pioneered in the higher education of women, while Yankees comprised most of the reformers who went South during [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] in the late 1860s to educate the [[Freedman|Freedmen]].<ref>Taylor (1979)</ref>

Historian John Buenker has examined the worldview of the Yankee settlers in the Midwest:
[[File:Old State House and State Street, Boston 1801.jpg|thumb|200px|[[Boston]], [[New England]] capital]]
<blockquote>Because they arrived first and had a strong sense of community and mission, Yankees were able to transplant New England institutions, values, and mores, altered only by the conditions of frontier life.  They established a public culture that emphasized the work ethic, the sanctity of private property, individual responsibility, faith in residential and social mobility, practicality, piety, public order and decorum, reverence for public education, activists, honest, and frugal government, town meeting democracy, and he believed that there was a public interest that transcends particular and stock ambitions.  Regarding themselves as the elect and just in a world rife with sin and corruption, they felt a strong moral obligation to define and enforce standards of community and personal behavior….  This pietistic worldview was substantially shared by British, Scandinavian, Swiss, English-Canadian and Dutch Reformed immigrants, as well as by German Protestants and many of the [[Forty-Eighters]].<ref>{{cite book |contribution=Wisconsin |author-first=John |author-last=Buenker |editor-first=James H. |editor-last=Madison |editor-link1=James H. Madison |title=Heartland: Comparative Histories of the Midwestern States |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TMUCo0UXCjoC&pg=PA72 |year=1988 |publisher=Indiana University Press |pages=72–73 |isbn=0253314232}}</ref></blockquote>
Yankees dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest, and were the strongest supporters of the new Republican party in the 1860s. This was especially true for the [[Congregationalists]], [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterians]], and Methodists among them. A study of 65 predominantly Yankee counties showed that they voted only 40 percent for the [[Whig Party (United States)|Whigs]] in 1848 and 1852, but became 61–65 percent [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] in presidential elections of 1856 through 1864.<ref>Kleppner p 55</ref>

[[Ivy League]] universities remained bastions of old Yankee culture until well after [[World War II]], particularly [[History of Harvard University|Harvard]] and [[Yale University|Yale]].