Your question really relates to the construction of White American identity throughout the history of the United States.

There has never been a distinct "English-American" ethnic identity: white Protestant immigrants from Britain have always been seamlessly integrated into American society as undifferentiated "whites". Even prior to American independence, non-Anglo whites were viewed as outsiders. In 1755 Benjamin Franklin (the son of an English immigrant) complained that German-speaking immigrants were becoming too numerous, and he wrote: "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs?" (sidenote: the history of how German-Americans later became undifferentiated whites is a whole other story). From the colonial period when the majority of immigrants to America were white protestants from the British isles, people of other immigrant groups and Catholics were viewed as ethnic outsiders, even if they still counted as "whites" who had greater rights than Black people or Native Americans.

This view that white Anglo-Saxon protestants ("WASPs") were the "purest" form of Americans and not some kind of ethnic "hyphenated American" subgroup continued on well into living memory. Other European groups or different religious groups (Catholics and Jews) were marginalized and viewed as "ethnics", even after many generations in America, but Protestants from the British isles have never been viewed as anything but "white".

Because of this, any English/Scottish/Protestant-Irish gangs are represented in the media as "American" rather than some ethnic subset. To take a simple example, one of the most famous American gangs of the 19th century would be the James-Younger gang, led by Frank and Jesse James. The James brothers were of British Protestant descent (Welsh, Scottish, and English) as were most of their fellow gang members from Missouri, but no one ever refers to Jesse James as a "British-American" outlaw for the reason described above. Another famous gang leader of English descent would be Butch Cassidy, leader of the Wild Bunch, who was the child of English immigrants. Yet no one would ever classify Butch Cassidy as "English-American", as a white protestant of Anglo-Saxon descent he is only ever seen as American. Whereas Al Capone, another American-born child of immigrants, is usually seen as an Italian-American gangster despite being an American from birth just the same as Butch Cassidy was.

For more discussion of the construction of white American identity from British protestant immigrant groups, see David Hackett Fisher's "Albion's Seed"

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!