Kaiser von Lohengramm@KaiserLoengramm
No, America did not actually “bring in” much French and Spanish heritage. It subsumed it. Whatever of it survived was not at all intentional. It was meant to be replaced and erased. Thomas Jefferson wrote of exactly this in reference to those Americans who settled the Louisiana territory:
“The addition of a country so extensive, so fertile, as Louisiana, to the great republican family of this hemisphere, while it substitutes, for our neighbors, brethren & children in the place of strangers, has secured the blessings of civil & religious freedom to millions yet unborn. by enlarging the empire of liberty, we multiply it’s auxiliaries, & provide new sources of renovation, should it’s principles at any time, degenerate; in those portions of our country which gave them birth.” - Thomas Jefferson
Note, substitutes brethren and children in the place of strangers. The French and Spanish are treated as strangers. The brethren are the Americans. Substitution is replacement. This was not a multi-cultural thing at all, where they were just added to the mix and treated as equals. They were meant to be replaced entirely, subsumed, assimilated, converted. And while it’s true there are vestiges left, the core of this land still is, and always will be, Anglo-Saxon.