Review: The Other Irish

Karen F. McCarthy's, "The Other Irish"
Karen F. McCarthy’s, “The Other Irish”

Dixie

Karen F. McCarthy’s The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America is a sweeping social history of the Scots-Irish that focuses on their contributions to American culture.

The story begins in northern Ireland during the Dark Ages when a Gaelic tribe called the Dal Riata crosses the Irish Sea and the begins the conquest of Pictland in Britain which they rename Scotia Minor.

Over the next few centuries, the Dal Riata and the Picts and later the Vikings intermarried to become the Scottish people. The Scots remained a raucous Gaelic tribe until the Reformation when John Knox and the Scottish nobles overthrew Catholicism, introduced Calvinism, and created the Presbyterian Church as the established church of Scotland:

“Knox was misogynistic and contemptuous of the nobility. He tore through Scotland with such a force that even its queen was driven to tears when he condemned her choice of husband. He eradicated traditional forms of entertainment like May Day, carnivals, gambling, and theatrical performances. Except for hymns, there was no dancing or music on the sabbath. The Kirk became the moral censor that meted out punishments to fornicators and drunkards. Within a single generation, Scotland was transformed from a land of heathens to one of puritans.”

Under King James I (1567-1635), the crowns of England and Scotland were united, and the  Plantation of Ulster was established in northern Ireland while the colonization of Virginia at “Jamestowne” was begun in the New World:

“England’s refusal to stay out of Ireland was draining the royal exchequer. For all the civilizing influence the Protestant Reformation had on Scotland, it, like everything else, never traversed the Irish Sea. So while the Scots were becoming moral, educated religious zealots, their ancestral Irish cousins remained ungovernable lapsed Catholics, with an avaricious, fornicating clergy. They were still a tribal culture, poor and illiterate, and they hated the English. …

James seized the northern lands of the exiled chieftain and drove his people from their homes. With the land vacated, James needed planters to move in quickly. The English weren’t particularly eager to move to Ireland, besides they never proved to be effective planters. James turned to a hardier stock – he granted Irish lands in the northern province of Ulster to Scottish lords who in term parceled out tracks to Scottish lowlanders. These people had been fighting almost continuously for a thousand years – if anyone could contend with the Irish, it was the Scots. …

A thousand years earlier their Dal Riata ancestors left Ireland as ungovernable, semi-heathen, feisty, fun-loving Gaels, now a new tribe returned seasoned by war, reformed by religion, and economically enterprising. Unfortunately since there was no longer any kinship with the Irish whom they dispossessed, their idyllic Ulster colony inevitably became a nightmare.”

These Scots-Irish Presbyterians, many of whom were transplanted Calvinists from northern England, survived and prospered in Ulster through the roller coaster ride of the seventeenth century: the English Civil War, Cromwell’s reign, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution and the Siege of Derry.

In the early seventeenth century, it was high taxes, famine, and religious persecution (a familiar story to the Irish) that brought them to America:

“The success of the Scots-Irish democratic experiment alarmed the English parliament. The Ulster colony had, after all, been established almost a hundred years earlier to benefit the Crown, not the Scots who were sent there. Now it had gone awry, as English cloth manufacturers were in competition with the woolen industry in the north of Ireland. The Ulstermen were getting rich at the expense of the English.

In a devastating blow to Ulster’s economy, parliament passed a law restricting the sale of wool products to all counties except the British market. The British then resold them in the rest of the empire.

The resilient group refocused their efforts into linen production, but, in the early 1700s, six years of drought ruined crops, including the flax they needed to make linen.

Crop shortages also caused the price of food to soar. With no income, they had to eat the seed they needed for the following year. Things were going from bad to worse.

In 1702, the formidable King William died when he fell of his horse after it tripped over a molehill. His successor believed the interests of the realm were best served by all its people worshipping in the hierarchical Anglican tradition of the monarchy. Bishops were to be appointed not elected. This ran contrary to the fundaments of the Kirk that had existed since the time of John Knox. Those who refused to conform were turned out of the pulpits and forced into exile, leaving Ireland without any religious leadership. If a minister remained, he couldn’t teach the marriages he performed were illegal; the dead couldn’t be buried without a minister of the Anglican Church presiding. To make matters worse, they had to pay a religious tax to the monarch’s church.

Over the next decade, many of the long land leases that had remained stable for generations came up for renewal. Landlords began ratcheting up the rents and auctioning farms off to the highest bidder. Families were forced off the land they had cultivated for decades. With economic, religious, and land restrictions that threatened their livelihood, they had no choice but to emigrate.

The cumulative result of all these setbacks was a mass exodus of Presbyterians beginning in 1717 …”

Around 200,000 Scots-Irish Presbyterians left Ulster from 1717 to the American Revolution. 100,000 immigrated between 1783 and 1812. 500,000 more came between 1815 and 1845. Finally, 900,000 came to America between 1850 and 1900.

Known simply as “Irish” in America until the 1830s, the overwhelming majority of the Scots-Irish founding settlers moved to the frontier in Pennsylvania backcountry (Colin Woodward, American Nations, pp.105-106):

“From their initial stronghold in south central Pennsylvania, the Borderlanders spread south down the mountains on an ancient 800-mile-long Indian trail that came to be known as the Great Wagon Road. This passage led out of Lancaster and York, through Hagerstown (in what is now the western panhandle of Maryland), down the length of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and through the highlands of North Carolina to terminate in what is now Augusta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of Borderlanders and their herds migrated along this trail to new land in the rugged, barely explored Southern upcountry. As Ulster and the Scottish Marches emptied between 1730 and 1750, the population of North Carolina doubled, and then doubled again by 1750. Southwestern Virginia was growing at 9 percent a year, and in the South Carolina backcountry in the 1760s, almost the entire population had come from Pennsylvania or interior Virginia. The Borderlanders may have technically moved into colonies controlled by Tidewater gentry and the great planters of the Deep South, but in cultural terms their Appalachian nation effectively cut Tidewater off from the interior, blocking the West Indian slaveocracy from advancing into the southern uplands. Not until after the revolution would they control any formal governments; places called Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia did not yet exist.”

From Pennsylvania, the Scots-Irish moved south into Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley before fanning out down the Appalachians into western Virginia, western North Carolina, upcountry South Carolina, and north Georgia.

They poured out of the Appalachians and rafted down the Ohio River and the Mississippi where Scots-Irish settlers became the dominant ethnic group in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In the Lower Midwest, they colonized southern Ohio, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois.

The Scots-Irish came down the Natchez Trace from Nashville and the Mississippi River from Kentucky from where they settled north Alabama, north Mississippi, northwest Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma. They also moved into Mexico where they fought and won the Texas Revolution.

The Scots-Irish settled "Greater Appalachia"
The Scots-Irish settled “Greater Appalachia”

The map of “Greater Appalachia” above from Colin Woodard’s American Nations underestimates the true extent of the Scots-Irish diaspora in Dixie.

The Scots-Irish clearly made it to the hill country, swamps, and piney woods of south Georgia, south Alabama, south Mississippi, and north Florida. They don’t call the Florida Panhandle the “Redneck Rivieria” for nothing.

It is difficult to exaggerate the Scots-Irish influence in Southern culture, especially in Texas and the Upper South, and their wider impact on America. I haven’t seen any firm numbers given the confusion of the Scots-Irish about their ethnic origins (they identify as “American” on the Census) but it is probable that over half of White Southerners are Scots-Irish in ancestry and most of the rest are from southern and western England and have thoroughly intermarried with them.

McCarthy’s The Other Irish focuses on the Scots-Irish contributions to American culture with separate chapters about origins, guns, religion, patriotism and military service, politics, slavery, music, stock car racing, literature, and NASA:

“Three Frontiersmen and Their Guns” tells the story of the Scots-Irish attachment to their guns through the lives of Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett. The highlights include the Scots-Irish victory at Kings Mountain in the American Revolution, the Creek War in Alabama, Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans, and the Alamo and the Texas Revolution.

“Them That Believe” focuses on how the Scots-Irish frontier experience led to the repudiation of Calvinism, the decline of the Presbyterian Church, and the rise of the Baptists and the Methodists in the South after the Great Awakening. There is also a section on William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Monkey Trial.

“American Solider” discusses the Scots-Irish love of war and their fervent patriotism. The Scots-Irish military honor roll includes Andrew Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, U.S. Grant, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and Sen. James Webb.

“Government Of, By, and For The Little Guy” focuses on the 14 Scots-Irish presidents that include Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, U.S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman. McCarthy also discusses the arc of the Dixiecrat Rebellion, the demise of the Solid South, and the rise of the Republican Party as a response to the Great Society and the Civil Rights Movement.

“The Abolitionist and the Aristocrat” explains how the Scots-Irish were divided over slavery and secession through the lives of John C. Calhoun and the fiery Scots-Irish abolitionist John Rankin.

“Maybelle and the Mountain” is an excellent chapter about the rise of Nashville and the Scots-Irish folk music which became known as “hillbilly music” in the 1920s and later as “country music.” This is told through the lives of the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, the Stanley Boys, Hank Williams, Sr., Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Dolly Parton.

I thought the best chapter in the book was “Racing Moonshine” about the origins of NASCAR in the Scots-Irish backwoodsmen who made moonshine in mountains during Prohibition and the Depression and who raced law enforcement officers into cities like Atlanta. See the song “Copperhead Road.”

“American Fairytale” explores the Scots-Irish contribution to American literature from Edgar Allen Poe to Mark Twain to L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz to William Faulkner and Steven King. The Scots-Irish also settled parts of rural New York and New England.

The “New Frontier” focuses on the life of James E. Webb, the administrator who led NASA to victory in the Space Race in the 1960s, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to step foot on the moon, who was also of Scots-Irish ancestry.

I found The Other Irish to be an excellent, breezy introduction to a subject of huge importance to understanding Southern culture. It should only take you but a few days to finish this book. I’m looking forward to digesting and reviewing some weightier material on the Scots-Irish in 2013.

Note: I was surprised to learn the origins of the “Man of Constant Sorrow” song from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” I will save that though for those who want to read the book.


About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

49 Comments

  1. Thanks Hunter,

    Great article and one of the best music video versions of a Copperhead Road ai e ever heard.

  2. My British ancestors are English and Welsh:

    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Dean
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Griffin
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Wilkerson
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/wallace
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/comer

    … and German.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boehm

    … and French.

    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Brabham

    My cousins are English …

    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/pelham
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/perry
    http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/white

    I’m sure there are plenty of Georgia Scots-Irish and Irish in my gene pool.

  3. At the start of the 2011 NASCAR season ESPN ran a one hour special about the Scots-Irish and the shine runners, even had Senator Webb. For a channel dedicated to the endless adolescence of white males it was pretty good.

  4. Hunter: Great article. Dixon wrote great books about Scot Irish like Leopards Spot and a few others. My Grandmother was Irish and she had ancestor who fought the Seminole Indians in North Florida. Mel Tillis is Irish Blood, But what gets me is..he is a Scottish Rite Mason. Judeo Masonry is awful powerful in the South…… In fact…thw whole USA….

  5. I cannot hardly control myself when i continue to read this Anti-Catholic rot. Calling us un-civilized, lowlife. Where do you get this crap from? Have you no shame. We Catholics fought in EVERY major YOU can think of, but always for FREEDOM. from idiots like you. You, sir, have no sence of history, just old predjudices, Shame. Shakesphere was Catholic, Thomas More, was Catholic, Gens. Beaureguard, Longstreet, and Admiral Semmes were Catholic AND were true WARRIORS, in the truest sence. Do you deny the courage in these and other men> My Confederate ancester, was a Corporal, in the 27th Texas Cav. He was a Catholic, survived, Vicksburg, Jackson, Holly Springs, Franklin, over a hundred engagements. Was he a coward? He, as i, believe in Duty, Honor, Country, as i also, am a former combat Marine, veteran of over 250 combat patrols in Vietnam. Am i a low life, un-civilized man? Get real, the “Refermation” was a REVOLT against the ONLY, at that time, Christian religion. For over 1,500 YEARS Catholicism reigned surpreme, till Luther, arose to attack God Almighty, to say, “I WILL NOT SERVE” Where do you honestly think he is spending eternity? Police yourself, gentlemen, and eradicate these fools from your mist.

  6. The Governor of Londonderry in the Siege was a Yorkshireman. Orangish bigot.

    If its any consolation Mosin, ive got plenty of Catholic Irish in my paternal side. Anglican and Hugenot in the maternal.

  7. The author was getting into the minds set of the dour Knoxite Calvinist.
    They still talk about Teigs as the author illustrated.

  8. I was baptised as a Methodist, good little American Taffies we are. My paternal Grandmother was NOT a good little Taffy. she was a Taffy hellion. She got married very young, too young; she decided she wanted to kick up her heels AFTER she began producing a spate of kids. She became a cook, for Catholic priests, in NYC. She used to come home to vist, and tell us all kinds of wonderful horrible stories about the antics of the priests. After she’d get in to a truly spectacular fight with one or more of the priests, she return to Methodism, and then cook for ministers. Then she’d get into a Battle Royale with one of them, and then go back to Holy Mother Church. My Dad was born when she was a Methodist, but half my cousins are Papists. I developed a rather jaundiced eye about the…..mmm….what’s the word…”sacrality”? of religion, at a very early age. I learned the Faith very early on – but never took one variant or another too seriously. Her stories were hilarious. She knew all the dirt, of all the Men of the Cloth, in the Tri State area.

    I think that’s why she kept getting gigs. Excellent culinary skills, and blackmail.

  9. My Confederate ancester … survived … over a hundred engagements. … [I] am a former combat Marine, veteran of over 250 combat patrols in Vietnam.

    Respect.

  10. Great post, Hunter. I want to read the book.
    Regarding the War of Independence, the British erred greatly in allowing them to immigrate. When the fighting started, there were hundreds of thousands of Scots- Irish who had, or their parents had, bad blood with Britain. My family, for example, were the defeated in the Battle of Culloden Moore, indentured and sent to the Americas.

  11. People talk all the time about the Revolution being about liberty. I think it was mostly about business in the North, and revenge in the South.

  12. The South wasn’t that hot for the War was it? New Englanders and Tide Water mainly. The battle of King’s Mountain was Patrick Ferguson and his battalion of loyalists and rifle company. Various different Scots going at it like the Celtic v Rangers Derby.

  13. The beauty of the frontier was that intrepid new Americans and the founding stock were able to perpetually bring God’s law to God’s country. Low-Churchism had finally found hearty soil, it was dreadfully out of place anywhere else, still is. When the frontier closed in the late 19th century it meant the climax of the Scots-Irish story, not the end but the point where everyday was going to be worse. They never had a chance against the Jews and High Church Christians that flourish in settled environments. They were on the frontier in part to get the hell away from all that.

    A successful secession could have seen pro-slavery Scots-Irish rumble through republican Mexico where they might have saved Don Maximiliano. Instead they felt the rods they’d been making on their own backs, marched off around the world to die for BRA while their culture was upended at every opportunity.

  14. I attended a traditional protestant school as a youngster, one of the women teachers there would always wear orange on St. Patties Day, lol.

  15. William Wallace, Scotland’s greatest warrior was Roman Catholic. His victory made possible The Declaration of Arbroath – still the greatest constitution ever written. And, like the Magna Charta, it was addressed to the papacy for ratification.

    Scotland was a great gem in the crown of the Christendom. It had high culture, art, craft guilds and wealth. Good-bye to all that when the Kirk, the Convention etc sided with the English Parliaentarian fight for the Supremacy with Jew money.

    With all estates forfeit to The Crown – that would be The Crown of the Judaic Imperium located on the square mi of The City of London – it took another 50 years after the ‘glorious revolution’ to settle the debt to the Amsterdam Jews over Scotland throw down a Jew Money Trust on top of the nation.

  16. Bookmarking this post. Boy, it is chock full of goodies. I’ve been wondering about my dad’s side as they were in Arkansas before Texas (1st generation came in at Virginia as indentureds, husband & wife)- hard to search, but all of my maternal grandparents’ people were NC through the Deep South (great grandmother, Wright- Georgia> Alabama> Panola, Ms) & grandaddy (Fleming), Tennessee mostly. These are easier and the second generation (Michael or Littleberry Wright, I forget) held 18 slaves & offspring.
    I’ve been looking for a new book & this’ll keep me busy awhile. Thank ya!

    Wayne @ 3:42 I think you have it reversed. 🙂 Just sayin’

  17. ““American Solider” discusses the Scots-Irish love of war and their fervent patriotism. The Scots-Irish military honor roll includes… Stonewall Jackson, U.S. Grant, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur…”

    I’m not sure why those people were called patriots. Jackson and Grant were leaders in a conflict which caused over 50,000 American civilian deaths, and Patton and MacArthur in 1932 in Washington DC, they brutally attacked 43,000 American WW1 veterans, their wives and children with rifles, bayonets, tanks and a arsenic based chemical weapon. Even when directly ordered by their Commander and Chief to cease their assault, MacArthur refused because he didnt agree with the suspected political views of the veterans. Patton went so far as to go around demolishing the homes of the veterans with the tanks. If the Irish’s consider this to be honorable, then I suppose it speaks volumes about their character.

  18. @ “….Get real, the “Refermation” was a REVOLT against the ONLY, at that time, Christian religion…”

    William Napier—– you were not attacked. And the people who became protestants (even acknowledged by your church) were AROUND LONG BEFORE LUTHER. (Even if you just include people like Jan Hus, and anyway, really since the beginning, from Christ.

    That aside— the way you lop the Orthodox Church out of history is more shameful. Others do exist, you know.

  19. Ireland and the hillier uplands of northern and western Britain had raiding cultures up to at least the 1600s and part of the 1700s whereas in the south and central parts of Britain raiding as a way of life had died out many centuries earlier.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if raiding cultures selected for different frequencies of character traits related to fighting than non-raiding cultures and if so then colonization from the two groups into two different regions might turn out very differently if the proportions was 60/40 in one case and 40/60 in the other.

  20. @ “….but it is probable that over half of White Southerners are Scots-Irish in ancestry and most of the rest are from southern and western England and have thoroughly intermarried with them….”

    Yes, thanks HW for this. Am jotting down the whole bibliography.

    Some of ours from those groups landed in the 1600s, then did not intermarry until the 1950s!— about 330 years later, and then, due to the “melting pot” business, probably.

    That’s why I think the “melting pot” propaganda (to push white sub-groups to intermarry) completely prefigured the race mixing propaganda of now.

    Race mixing was just an extension of the “melting pot” MEME.

    Whole groups stayed amongst themselves until the “melting pot.” Also, in much literature, white sub-groups are referred to as “race.” So, they perceived themselves, very deeply, to be different peoples, and to deny that is just lying.

    Nor is this a “social construct,” obviously. These people share genes, lifestyle, works, language, culture in the natural sense, (arts as genuine expression of group-self, as opposed to calculated propaganda to produce effects in the people), etc.

  21. Wallace means Of Wales or From Wales. Didnt mean he was Welsh but it did mean that he was some sort of Norman who had been stationed in Wales at some point. Gilliaume De Wallace was also a French speaker primarily. The somewhat Democratic revolt he staged in Scotland was as much a part of dynastic Anglo-Norman-Franco rangling as the fighting between RichardIII v Henry VII. Henry VII was a French puppet. A lot of the English Kings at various points were French or French puppets. Occassionally you get someone like Edward I or Edward III or Henry V who get the upper hand. But these three were in many ways themselves French colonialists. Folk don’t really understand how heavily the French penetrated Scottish public life and English public life.

  22. “Get real, the “Refermation” was a REVOLT against the ONLY, at that time, Christian religion. For over 1,500 YEARS Catholicism reigned surpreme…”

    Napier, you don’t know diddly. Papal Catholi-schism separated from the One True Church in 1054, and took all of Western Europe with her into schism, and heresy.
    The Reformers knew this- after all, most of them had Doctorates, were Clerics, Lawyers, intellectuals, even a King in the midst of them (Henricus VIII).

    They looked to the East, looked to the Patristic Fathers, and saw Rome for what she was- the Whore of Babylon.

    This is all old hat. We’ve discussed this time and again on this blog. You are operating from a position of ignorance of what the readers of OD know. At least Lynda gives us all common historical meat to chew on. You’re just gnawing on Papal gristle.

    Like an old dog.

  23. On the Hobbit again,

    Mordor and Isengard could be Birmingham and Manchester. These cities were considered Satanic in the poems by Blake. Birmingham is also called the Black Country. It was essentially an industrial waste and Imperial workshop. There’s a scene in Zulu Dawn when a drummer boy is shot by a British volley while he lays out range markers in front of a charging Zulu Impi and a soldier says:

    “imagine coming all this way to get shot by a bullet from Birmingham.”

    The joke is complex on a lot of levels. The kid could have just as easily been sweating his guts out in a machine shop in Birmingham as fighting Zulu. Most of the Tommy Atkins themselves were probably escaping various industrial hellholes, their officers doing it for sport or advancement. Taken compared a lot of British officers to Orcs pushing men into situations that they’d otherwise avoid. In Zulu there’s a composite version of a net do well Private Hook. He’s real but not as much of a scumbag as the film maker portrays. The poetics of the Hobbit and LOTR strongly resemble Blake’s visionary metaphysics and it’s hard not to think of certain characters as parts of our own personality. Someone like Chelmsford for example…what was he? A butcher.

    Given Tolkein’s background in Anglo Lit and Medieval Lit, he appears to be doing not much more than taking Architypes of his own race and blending it through history and tagging on a few extra events that could be seen as contemporaneous. The fantasy
    element simply allows for an internally consistent mythological system.

  24. Napier: Father Coughlin was a good man. Pope Leo 13 was anti masonic… The Catholics today are like all the rest of religions today…They are all New World Order controlled. Baptist are bad as hell today and all the rest. Not many White Men left in world today. Most so called whites are Whiggers and will die to keep the evil regime in power. Martin Lindstedt is right about Tribulation, Implosion of Babylon, Mamzers and many other things….There is good White Men who were born in the Catholic Religion. I was in Nam to as a Marine and got a taste of Agent Orange and Dioxin and then heard all the lies from D.C. about it—saying oh oh oh – its Post Tramatic Stress Syndrome/Disorder its not TOXIC BRAIN SNYDROME. Its not the chmicals!!Then they turn around and give 10 Grand to each survivor of The Jap Detainment Camps. And they cry how terrible this was—yet they fail to see why they locked them up—Hoover caught them with canisters in LA were they get their drinking water to poison it. This is in SABOTAGE: THE SECRET WAR AGANIST AMERICA. Thats why Roosevelt locked them up. Yet not much has been given to all the Nam Veterans who got messed up from Agent Orange…hardly anything….so much for good old Uncle Sam…

  25. The Reformers knew this- after all, most of them had Doctorates, were Clerics, Lawyers, intellectuals, even a King in the midst of them (Henricus VIII).

    Bible interpretation by common “intellectuals” was a great tragedy for western culture. King Henry viii was well aware and restricted access accordingly. The religious autodidacts were suspected to be culture destroyers then, now it’s proven.

  26. Once the White Supremacists were defeated in the US (confederates) every politician was forced to include blacks in their political calculus. At least some of the hostility of Kennedy to white colonists in Africa was about playing to MLK and Malcolm X and other black nationalists. Even FDR’s hostility to European control in Asia and Africa had something to do with playing the “banana gallery”.
    The defeat of the confederacy was a critical turning point in our collective survival as a people. It truly was pandora’s box. The demons it unleashed will be the end of us.

  27. In my continuing quest into the cause of rot in the belly of the West, I’m noticing a recurring group throughout the years, and they are not (only) Jews, but Jesuits. Anyone know much about this order of Catholocism?

  28. Personally I think Jesuits have been on the right side of things for centuries. There are missionaries and academics, the later not being immune to the destructive trends of our age yet allowing kids to be fashionably skeptical without apostatizing. Buchanan is a product of Jesuit high school and college. Sometimes they are dead wrong though for instance about liberation theology.

  29. I am of scots irish ancestry who came to canada. It was confusing growing up in Alberta where Protestants and Catholics had to go to separate schools. My father wouldn’t let us play with dogans (as Catholics were called) my mum would put an orange shamrock on us on st Patrick day. I had a good friend who was Italian and my dad gave the ok I could play with him because he liked billy. In canada where everyone is of a different ancestry these ancient hatreds are a waste of time.

  30. Nice article Mr. Wallace. Glad to read and learn something from reading it. The Scot-Irish has contributed to America as did many groups. This group particular help shape the culture more than many of the others. Nascar, moonshine and country music are just part of it. History is not one way but multiple paths that lead to the same interwoven story. I just hope there is way to keep all of it taught to the next generation (God I hate hipster shits).

    All fanatics are culture destroyer. For a more recent example look no further than the Taliban and what they did to all those ancient treasures and art. Its a pure crime. Anyone who destroys years of history should be killed. If there is a chance to make such a rule I would gladly rally behind it. ALL HISTORY should be remembered, the good and the bad.

  31. They reckon 250,000 came from Ulster to America in the 1700s and yes they were all from Ulster and mostly Presbyterians. The first ship (Eagles Wing) left Groomsport in 1636 but had to turn back. The ‘Friends Goodwill’ left Larne in the early 1700s and made it to America. There is a statue in Larne commemorating this event.

    They were in the vanguard of the trek west. And Fort Laramie was built by an Ulsterman. A good book is ‘God’s Frontiersmen’ which tells their story. There is also a video.

  32. It should also be noted that another and lesser known reason for the expatriation of the Irish to America in 1740 was the result of what was known as the Great Frost, which created a much greater and more pervasive famine than the well known Great Famine of the 1850’s. Please read the book “Arctic Ireland” for the details.

    Yours Aye,

    Dirk

  33. Many Scots-Irish like my GGGrandfather Emanuel McCoy, born 1838 Eastern Tennessee moved to East Texas (Noonday) after the Civil War to escape Reconstruction. (Emanuel served 4 years in Forrest’s 6th Georgia Cavalry) . In 1945 I was born 10 miles away in Tyler & grew up in Dixie Community. The map above is interesting in that it shows part of East Texas as Appalachia & part Deep South.

  34. Very interesting stuff here, comments included. I’m mostly irish and some german catholic, and then one grandparent a scots irish and dutch presbyterian who came down from Canada with his parents. But I’m deeply fascinated with the scots irish.

    Wayne, the jesuits are very bad actors and are recognized as such even among some catholics. I have cousins who went to Notre Dame and when comparing the Franciscans, I believe, who run it they point out how truly corrupt the jesuits are who run Georgetown, where I went to school, even as they admit catholics in general have issues. I personally consider it a death and torture cult. I’m allowed to say this having been raised one. But they are behind so much of the Diversity Cult’s funded immigration, and worse, they sew seeds of hatred between white men and women. They are backwards in general, and corrupt and evil at their very core. My dad went to Viet Nam and his scots irish cousin, a tall redheaded guy, was in the ground in 18 months after constant exposure to Agent Orange.

    Anyway, I just felt like saying how interested I am in White people’s history which has been practically eradicated by the Diversity Cultist academics, everyone knows especially whom I refer to.

    I see the northwestern european people as a race unto themselves. We are all celts and germanics. Growing up in the northeast in the 70’s we were a tribe, more or less, divided in some ways by class but never these differences of specific country or religion of origin. Having to contend with jews and southern italians will make you know you are White, northwestern european to your core.

    I’ll be criticized for saying this on this site but will anyway: I think we’d be far better off organizing behind our common northwestern european roots and cultural commonalities. We are a family, a race. We are the hated in this country, and in the world. In the US I’ve suffered horribly for being a fair haired White woman, and no persecutor has bothered to note differences between the irish, scots irish, dutch, german and maybe even a little english that courses through my veins; to our enemies, we are all the same. Not italian, not jewish, not polish, not greek.

    Northwestern european. That is what we all are, we are all marked and I believe would be better off uniting.

  35. Some the comments are great. The other irish book is a great read. It gives a true story of the protestant immigrants from northern ireland and scotland. The southern irish, mostly catholics gave the usa and canada nothing. Oops other than pubs and crime, and st paddys day, who remember was scottish. Beats me why the irish celebrate a scotsman, course thats irish aint it.
    The great conclusion of the book is the clarity it provides in the diffence of the irish( mainly roman catholic) to the scots
    Irish (mainly protestant). Anyone who reads this and disagrees with my comment should watch the series The Protestant Revolution. I rest my case.

  36. ” and st paddys day, who remember was scottish”

    In point of fact the Scotti are just another Gaelic tribe from Ireland who invaded the northern reaches of the island of Great Britain when the Romans left. And St. Patrick was a Romanized Briton, not a Scot at all.

  37. I’m of Scot, Scots-Irish, German (PA Dutch), Irish descent. The funniest thing I remember is my Scots family reunion. You’d have thought our parents all left Scotland 2 weeks ago instead of around 1704. I get tears when I hear Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes. I don’t have issues with Catholics, Jews or people of different origin. Judge the individual, not the group. There are good and bad people everywhere in every group.

    Yep, we’re an independent people and tough, but the truly strong are also kind to others.

  38. Scots-Irish Southerners have very long memories, and some of us know our history.
    Dominicans, the black hearted jez… and their latest storm troopers…opus dei..it’s all the same. As a Deist hearing you micks yammering about how horrible the prot have been to you over the last couple of hundred years amuses me… That’s funny, that.

    un-holy Roman Inquisitions I & II.

    Since its inception, every people your “missionaries” have ever come into contact with around the globe, your “religion” has maimed and murdered millions of them. In the name of your God, you raised torture to a psychopathic art form. Now, you whine about your oppression in Ireland by the prot? Get a grip. If you could, you’d still kill us all today wholesale, and anyone else who didn’t accept the damnable dogma of your guilt genuflecting death cult. 🙂

  39. Hunter, Emanuel McCoy was also my GGGrandfather. My Grandfather, Sherman Albert McCoy, was born 1898 on the McCoy Farm in Noonday. His siblings were Walter, Frank, Forest, Ottis & Erva Mae. My Dad was Albert Merle. Eldest son of Albert & Alpha, Billy, passed away at age 2). Younger brother Donald Ray McCoy is also deceased. As you probably know, Emanuel was a Cavalryman in Forest’s 6th GA Cavalry. Was there a McCoy farm in Georgia & is that why Emanuel enlisted in GA? The only question my Grandfather was allowed to ask about the war was why he was named after General Sherman. Eager to hear from you.

  40. II’ll post it again and then never come back.
    I was booted out of amren because I posted too many comments about Jewish communist NAACP, Brown vs Topeka and affirmative activists as well as endlessly mentioning that not all Asian countries have average IQs f 105.

    So I come here and find an anti Catholic site. No wonder White Americans have allowed themselves to be affirmative actioned out of every job and college, murdered, raped beaten and robbed by blacks protected by Jews and the government and villified by every teacher and school book from nursery to PHD level as well as the media.

    REmember when the KKK managed to outlaw Catholic schools in Oregon and Kentucky? The nuns filed suit and the courts overturned the KKK laws. Catholics are 1/3 of the White population of this country. Many are atheists, Jews and ultra liberal lutherans methodists etc.

    So if you southerners want White allies, don’t spout hatred of Catholics. If you ever move to a city you might be grateful to send your kids to a civilized Catholic school instead of a public school with black and hispanic illegal savages.

  41. The correct term in the U.S.A. is “Scotch-Irish”. The term “Scots” has nearly universally been abandoned in the U.K. apparently out of neurosis equating Scotch only with Scotch whisky. You’ll find that the guid Scotch Bard Robert Burns predominantly used the terms Scotch not Scots after the influx of Scotch-Irish and Scotch into this country.

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