Included as a tribute to our Ulster-Scottish Ancestors
Ulster Sails West, The Story of the Great Emigration from Ulster to North America in the 18thCentury, Together with an Outline of the Part Played by Ulstermen in Building the United States by William Forbes Marshall (published 1951)
Pg 2-3: Moreover, in America itself, and far outside it, our story has been overshadowed by the story of the Puritan achievement in New England, and the story of the Cavalier achievement in Virginia. These people had the start of our people in America, and their stories got the start of any other.
Ulster Sails West
Now to estimate the Ulster achievement it is necessary, first of all, to prove that an achievement was possible. It is necessary to prove that Ulstermen were in America in sufficient numbers to make possible a great Ulster contribution to the United States. My first task, therefore, is to make it clear that from the year 1718, and all through that century a continuous stream of emigration poured from the North of Ireland, a stream that, at frequent intervals became a roaring flood. This great outflow was almost entirely Protestant, mainly Presbyterian.
Why?
Pg 3-4 There was religion. After the siege of Derry, a certain amount of toleration was granted to Presbyterians, out of gratitude for services rendered by them during the war. But there were still grievances that were unredressed. The validity of Presbyterian marriages was denied. Dissenters were barred from teaching in schools. They were compelled to serve as church-wardens. They were often not allowed to bury their dead without the funeral service of the Established Church (of England). Moreover, in the reign of Queen Anne, the Sacramental Test for all office-holders was restored, and there was considerable interference with Presbyterian ministers and Presbyterian worship. This curtailment of toleration roused much resentment, and many Presbyterians regarded it as black ingratitude. They recalled without their services Derry could not have been held, and King William would have been left without a bridge-head in Ireland.On the other hand, Archbishop Boulter contended that religious intolerance was not a factor leading to the emigration, and that the blame for it was chiefly due to high rents; while the Irish gentry on a Commons’ Committee reported that “the inclination to emigrate is increased by the new and burdensome demand made by the clergy of the title of agistment.” If we accept the Archbishop’s view, we must disbelieve what the early emigrants said after their arrival in America –and presumably they should have known the reasons that induced them to go –and we must also dispute the verdict of the most eminent historians on both sides of the ocean.
Pg 4-6 It is not, however, contended here that religious intolerance was the only factor or even the only important factor leading to this emigration. There were six years of drought between1714 and 1719. There was disease that caused a high death-rate in sheep in 1716. There was an outbreak of small-pox in 1718. There was scarcity of silver and copper coin that hampered trade. The woolen industry had languished, and the linen trade was not flourishing. There werethree very bad harvests in 1725, 1726, and 1727, so that in 1728 the price of food was higher than in living memory, and the minister of Templepatrick declared that there was not seed enough to sow the ground. There was a great frost in 1739 followed by famine and disease, and Gordon states that in 1740 the mortality caused by scanty and improper food was very high. There was a failure of the potato crop in 1756-7. Then there were the very high rents and the consequent increase in tithes. After the siege of Derry, rents were low. Leases were granted on easy terms, for landlords were eager to get tenants; but when these leases ran out, the rents were raised to an exorbitant figure. Finally, about fifty years after the emigration began, the leases on Lord Donegall’s estate expired, and the rents were then so greatly advanced that thousands of tenants were unable to pay them. The tenants were evicted in great numbers, and these Antrim evictions resulted in a wholesale emigration to North America. They arrived in time to swell Washington’s army, and as Foude puts it: “the foremost, the most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were those whom the Bishops and Lord Donegall and company had been pleased to drive out of Ulster.” We can truly say, then, of these Ulster emigrants in the 18th century, that it was not of their own free will they left their native soil.For various reasons, religious, social, and economic, they were compelled to go. As Froude says, they were driven out.
WHEN? 1718-1774
There waits the New Land:
They shall subdue it,
Leaving their sons’ sons
Space for the body
Space for the soul.
[pg 6-7] The Five Ships
We begin with 1718, for it was the year that what had been a tiny trickle became a flowing stream. In July and August of that year five ships from Ireland anchored in Boston Harbor. Two of these probably sailed from Dublin, calling possibly at Belfast, and taking on board the Rev. William Boyd, of Macosquin; one of them sailed from Derry; one from Coleraine; and from Glasgow and Belfast. Shortly afterwards there arrived two more ships, one from Dublin and one from Derry.
These ships carried emigrants from the valley of the Bann and the valley of the Foyle. The venture was not without some preparation, for during the period 1682-1718, several ministers and licentiates from Ulster crossed to America. Two of these ministers, the Rev. William Holmes, of Strabene, and the Rev. Thomas Craighead, of Donegal, went out in 1714, and, through Holmes’ son, who was a ship captain, were in touch with many of their friends in Ireland.
New Derry
The Rev. William Boyd, of Macosquin, and the Rev. William Cornwall, of Clogher, came with the emigrants of 1718. In the same year there went out, amongst others, the Rev. William Elliott, the Rev. James Woodside, the Rev. James McGregore, and the Rev. William Tennent. In the following year came the Rev. James Hillhouse and the Rev. Samuel Young with two licentiates [Definition, licentiates: somebody authorized in profession –granted a license to practice or teach a profession or skill. Presbyterian preacher: licensed to preach but not perform the sacraments in a Presbyterian church, usually a trainee minister who has not yet been ordained.], John McKinstry and Samuel Dorrance, to be followed in succeeding years by a great army of ministers, licentiates and students, who built up the Presbyterian Church of North America on the foundation laid previously by Makemie of Ramelton, and firmly planted its Blue Banner across the sea. Most notable, however, was the Rev. James McGregore, of Aghadowey, who was accompanied by a large section of his congregation. These emigrants of 1718 founded and settled the township of New Londonderry in New Hampshire; they settled also at Worcester; and in a short time they founded numerous settlements in New Hampshire and Maine.
Pg 7-8 I wish to draw attention to several points of interest regarding them.
Their educational standard was remarkably high for people of their station in the early 18thcentury. They were mostly small farmers and laborers who had been living in a comparatively remote province of the United Kingdom. They sent out a petition to Governor Shute before they sailed. 328 Ulstermen seem to have signed the petition. 315 wrote their own names. Only 13 signed with their marks.
In the next place their standard of values is clearly revealed in the building program of New Derry. First, the erection of a rude fort for general protection against Indian attack; second, the erection of a house of worship for the community; third, the building of a school; and last of all, houses for themselves.
Again, the ministers they had with them were a tribute to their active church membership in circumstances where such membership is often lightly regarded. That McGregore’s people had their minister with them is a fact which does not stand by itself. Dr. Clark of Cahans went to America in 1764, with 300 members of his congregation. Thus the emigrants were not strangers in a strange land. They went out as communities, or to join communities, of the race and faith.
Moreover, it is interesting to note that they did not regard themselves as Irish. In fact, nothing infuriated them more that to be classed as Irish. “It made my blood boil,” said William Smith, “to hear ourselves called a parcel of Irish.” They protested violently when American people and America officials described them in this way. They were, they said with great indignation, people of the Scottish nation in Ulster who had given their strength and substance and lives to uphold the British connection there, and it was hard, in this new land, to be identified with the very people to whom they had always been opposed.
Pg 8-10 Then again they introduced to New England two things that were never seen there before –the small flax spinning wheel, and the Irish potato. Many of them wintered in Boston city in the first year of their arrival, and the good ladies of Boston were tremendously intrigued by the strange machines which seemed inseparable from the Ulster women. Indeed, to watch the spinning became a fashionable fad. Further, it is because of these emigrants that our potatoes, which came to Europe from South America, are known as Irish potatoes all over the United States. A family named Young, from Burt, in Donegal, presented a few of these strange tubers to its New England neighbors, but the gift was regarded as poisonous, and the potatoes were thrown into the nearest swamp. Eventually a man named Walker, in Andover, Massachusetts, was persuaded to plant a few tubers. They blossomed and produced their seed in what we call potato “apples.” Mrs. Walker made a valiant effort to cook these apples. She tried them boiled, and she tried them roasted, and in the end pronounced them unfit for food. But, the following spring, when Mr. Walker was ploughing his garden, he turned up some potatoes, and when these had been cooked, the verdict was enthusiastic. Last year I asked an American soldier from Iowa if his people had a special name to distinguish our potato from the sweet potato. “Yes,” he said, “we have. We call your kind Irish potatoes.”
It need hardly be said that these emigrants of 1718 were a tough people. They were settled on the Indian border, and were an efficient protection to the province, which was what they were intended to be, and was, indeed, the reason why they were at first welcomed by the earlier colonists. They were a terror to the Indians, and they soon gained a reputation for fighting and pugnacity that often left them in bad odor with the Quakers and the State Authorities. It is recorded of the New, Derry men that their arrival and settlement on the frontier were resented by some colonists nearby, who organized an expedition to drive out, the newcomers by force. When these people arrived at the edge of the clearing, they found the Ulster emigrants assembled for worship, their minister in the midst. One good look was sufficient. There was no attack. Very quietly they made for home, and I have no doubt it was the best of their play.”
Pg 10-11
July the First at Oldbridge town
There was a famous battle.
For it was not for nothing that the new township was called Londonderry. Many of the settlers were veterans of the famous siege, and that siege was one of their proudest memories. It is recorded that the song most frequently sung round their firesides was the ballad of the Boyne Water. Oldish men who had starved and fought on Derry walls, and youngish men reared in the Derry tradition were not men to be trifled with...
Priest and teacher of the town,
Long as stand good Londonderry,
With its stories sad and merry,
Shall by name be handed down
As a man of prayer and mark,
Grave and reverend Matthew Clark.
Londonderry (N.H.) Celebration, 1869
Pg 11 It was recently said of James McGregore that there was no minister of that name in Derry at the siege. But, like his successor in New Derry, he was a soldier before he became a minister. They can still show you in New Derry the musket that he took with him into his pulpit, while the worshipers took theirs into the pews. They can still tell you that when Matthew Clark lay dying in New Hampshire he directed that none should touch his coffin or carry it to the grave except the men who had fought beside him on Derry walls.
Dear light of purity that gleams for ever
Where the wild rain sweeps northward out to sea; -
That is the Maiden City by the river,
And there for us the strength of love shall be. –A Close
...During the quarter century before the Revolution, ten distinct settlements were made by people from New Derry, and all of these became towns of influence and importance in New Hampshire. During the same period two strong settlements were made in Vermont and one in Maine, besides numerous families, singly and in groups, in all directions, North and East especially, and up the Connecticut river, and over the ridge of the Green Mountains.
Pg 11-13 ...the War of Independence. (I'm not including these individual men, anyone interested can find them in the book)
Pg 14-16 ...In the spring of 1718, an Ulster minister wrote to a friend in Scotland as follows: “There is like to be a great desolation in the Northern parts of this kingdom by the removal of several of our brethren to the American plantations. No less than six ministers have demitted their congregations, and great numbers of their people go with them...
Again, in 1728, the Rev. William Livingston writes of the way in which the people are being driven out of the country to America by want, high rents, and exorbitant tithes. In the same year Archbishop Boulter, in a letter to the Secretary of State in England, goes into greater detail. He states that “it is certain that above 4,200 men, women, and children have been shipped within three years, and of these above 3,100 last summer. The whole North is in a ferment, and people every day are engaging one another to go next year. The rumor has spread like a contagious distemper, and the people will hardly bear anyone who tries to cure them of their madness.” In the following year he writes again: “The rumor of going to America still continues. There are now seven ships at Belfast that are carrying off about 1,000 passengers thither.”
James Logan was an Ulsterman from Lurgan. He was a man of great eminence in Pennsylvania... is remarks on the emigration are dated 1725. “It looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhabitants. If they continue to come they will make themselves Proprietors of the Province. Last week there were no less than six ships, and every day two or three.” Logan was a Quaker, and no great friend to his fellow-countrymen. He and the Quakers seem to have believed that the Ulstermen, if they continued to come, would devour the whole country. The Quaker policy, therefore, according to some Ulster-born cynics of later date, was to get newcomers away to the Indian border as quickly as possible, where their love of fighting would make them useful. The Quaker merchants would sell them (and the Indians) the gunpowder...
Pg 16-17 B...Proud’s History of Pennsylvania states that by 1729 some 6,000 Scotch-Irish had come over, and for several years prior to 1750 about 12,000 annually. In September, 1736, one thousand families sailed from Belfast alone.
The same story is told in Baird’s History of Religion in America, Harrison’s “The Scot in Ulster,” and Hodge’s Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in America. Indeed so serious was the shape of things at home that as early as 1728 the Presbyteries in Ulster were asked to report unofficially to the Government on the causes of the emigration, and wereexhorted to use their influence to keep the people at home.
...Johnson, in his history of Emigration from the United Kingdom to North America (London, 1913, pg 2) quotes figures from The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1774 to show that “in the five years 1769-1774, no less that 43,720 people sailed from the five Ulster ports of Londonderry, Belfast, Newry, Larne, and Portrush to various settlements on the Atlantic seaboard. These points of departure were thus responsible for an annual outing of at least 8,740 souls.” An eminent American historian writes that between 1730 and 1770, at least half a million souls were transferred from Ulster to the colonies, while Froude says that in the two years which followed the Antrim evictions 30,000 Protestants left Ulster.
Pg 17-18 Lecky’s verdict is as follows: “For nearly three quarters of a century this drain on the energetic Protestant population continued. The famine of 1740 and 1741 gave an immense impulse to the movement, and it is said that for several years the Protestant emigrants from Ulster annually amounted to about 12,000.” More than 30 years later, Arthur Young found the stream still flowing, and he tells us that, in 1773, 4,000 emigrants sailed from Belfast. Approaching the subject from another angle, a modern American writer estimates that in the three years from 1771 to 1773, at least 100 ships were regularly engaged with emigrant trafficfrom the North of Ireland.
It is also significant that while in 1701 the population of the State of Pennsylvania is reckoned at 20,000, in less than two years it was 250,000. To what was this enormous increase due, if not to an enormous emigration from Scotland and Ulster? No matter where you read in the history of that period, you find the indications of that enormous emigration. Spencer’s History of the United States, for example, tells us that in one fortnight in 1773, 3,500 emigrants from Ulster landed at the port of Philadelphia.
These facts, I venture to say, make it clear what I set out to prove, that there was a continual flow of emigrants from Ulster to North America in the 18th Century, and that this emigration was in numbers amply sufficient to make a great Ulster contribution to American progress and United States independence.
Pg 18-20 Where?
Something hidden, Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges.
Something lost behind the Range. Lost and waiting for you. Go!
The next point to consider is –where did all these people go to after their arrival in America? ...All of them had one thing in common: they were the pioneers on the road to the West. They had no notion of settling down in East Coast towns to be navies and laborers, politicians, publicans and policemen. The Ulsterman’s urge was towards the backwoods and the Indian border. President Theodore Roosevelt in his “Episodes from the Winning of the West” writes: “It is doubtful if we have fully realized the part played by this stern and virile people. They formed the kernel of that American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward.” And Charles Hanna, in his work on the Scotch-Irish, refers to them as “that indomitable race, whose pioneers in unbroken ranks from Champlain to Florida formed the advance guard of civilization in its progress to the Mississippi, and first conquered, subdued, and planted the wilderness between.”
These Ulstermen, indeed, went far afield... They went from Pennsylvania up the valley of the Shenandoah, and down the Holston river into Tennessee. A native of the latter State has declared: “An overwhelming majority of the early settlers of our State was Scotch-Irish. Every Tennessean descending from our first settlers is to be put down as of this people if he cannot prove his descent to be otherwise. No Church other than theirs, the Presbyterian Church, was founded in East Tennessee for sixty years after its first settlement.”
Pg 20-21 ...Thomas Jefferson, United States President said that the Irish held the valley between the Blue Ridge and the North Mountain, and that they formed a barrier there which none could venture to leap. You can read about that in Mary Johnston’s novel, “The Great Valley.” They went on through Virginia in great numbers to the Carolinas. In 1735 Henry McCullock, an Ulsterman, was granted 64,000 acres in North Carolina, and to these lands he brought between 3,000 and 4,000 of his countrymen. The historian of South Carolina says that there was no country gave them so many of their inhabitants as Ireland. The historians of Georgia says that its prosperity is largely due to the Ulster people and their descendants, and from them, he adds, the blood was scattered throughout the South and South-Western States. “Kentucky was first settled by Ulstermen from Virginia and North Carolina...
I have mentioned Roger’s Rangers and “North-West Passage.” Many of my readers will have seen another well-known picture, “Sergeant Yorke,” which gives a glimpse of life in the border country between Kentucky and Tennessee. It adds interest to that picture to know that the people there were largely of Ulster stock, that they retain some remnant of Ulster speech, and that of such people is Daniel Boone, the Indian Scout and fighter. His memory is still cherished in that region, as the picture testifies, and his name is the greatest to be found in the long annals of American frontiersmen.
Pg 21-22 But the mountain region from Pennsylvania to Kentucky has perhaps a less worthy interest for us in Northern Ireland. These mountains once harbored a rebellion which it took a United States army to put down, and the rebellion occurred because the authorities tried to stop the making of untaxed poteen [illegally distilled alcohol (in Ireland) especially from potatoes –also called “moonshine”]. The industry, we are told, still flourishes in out of the way places. It is to be feared that we exported it with the spinning wheels and the potatoes.
Ulster’s mark on America is also visible in its place names. There are eighteen towns in the United States named after Belfast. There are seven Derrys, nine Antrims, sixteen Tyrones. There is a Coleraine in Massachusetts. New Hampshire has Stewartstown. Washington, Ohio, and Iowa have each a Pomeroy. Hillsborough is in New Hampshire, Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Maine has Newry. Ohio has Banbridge. In twelve States there are twelve Milfords. In Michigan there is a town named after that river that is not in Ulster, but was once dyed red with Ulster Wood, the famous River Boyne.
The Ulster-American Achievement
We have now traced out countrymen across the ocean. We have seen that they crossed in very large numbers over a long period of years. We have seen something of their distribution in the American Colonies... What was the nature of their contribution to the United States?
The Road to the West
In the first place they led the way to the West. It was they who steadily pushed the frontier back, over the Alleghenies and on to the Mississippi... famous Indian scouts as Simon Kenton,Davy Crockett, and Danny Boone.
Pg 22-23 The Revolution
...They were eager to fight in that war, and they were the first to proclaim it. Here is what President McKinley said about them in 1893: “They were the first to proclaim for freedom in these United States: even before Lexington the Scotch-Irish blood had been shed for American freedom" ...The reference by President McKinley to the Ulster bloodshed before Lexington is explained by the fact that the first encounter between British and Americans was not at Concord and Lexington, but on the Alamance river in North Carolina on May the 14th, 1771, between the Ulster-Irish of that region and a British force under Governor Tryon.
The well-known American historian Bancroft... “The first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great Britain came, not from the Puritans of New England, nor from the Dutch of New York, nor from the Cavaliers of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The reference here, as in McKinley, is to the Mecklenburg Resolutions of Independence. These Resolutions were adopted by a convention of the Ulster-Irish which met inNorth Carolina some time before the issue of the well known Declaration drafted by Jefferson. The Resolutions were drafted and proposed by Dr. Ephraim Brevard, of Huguenot-Ulster descent...
Pg 23-24... The Army
Throughout the whole war General Washington made no concealment of his high regard forthe American troops of Ulster origin. He vowed that if the worst came to the worst, he would fight his last battle by their side... “If defeated everywhere else,” said the great leader, “I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scotch-Irish of my native Virginia.” ...
Pg 25-26 As to their actual numbers in the American army, an American writer of that period asserts that up to the coming of the French, Ireland had furnished troops in the ratio of 100 to 1 of any other nation. There is good reason to believe that, during the war, the Ulster-Irish formed one-third of the total population. The writer’s estimate of our troops engaged is probably extravagant, but it may have been true at certain periods of the war, and especially true at times of the regulars as distinct from the militia. It is well known that the record of Congress in the war was far from creditable. It would not give Washington enough regular troops, and it would not properly equip, clothe or feed the troops that he had. Those who wish to read about his history can read about it in American novel “Rabble in Arms.” Congress wanted to fight the war on the cheap, with militia... it let Washington down again and again. He had many claims to greatness; but among them this must never be forgotten, that he was able to keep an army in the field when a lesser man would have thrown up his command in disgust. Militia, here today, and away tomorrow, were no substitute for troops of the line, yet again and again the general’s appeals for more regulars fell on deaf ears... One famous force of regulars was the Pennsylvania Line, and these were Ulster-Irish almost to a man.
Pg 26-28 Indeed, all the evidence we can obtain confirms the predominance of our people in the army and in the war effort. Joseph Galloway was a delegate to the first Continental Congress, but he became bitterly pro-British, and sailed for England. He appeared before a Committee of the British House of Commons and was asked “What were the troops in the service of Congress chiefly composed of?” He replied “I can answer the question with precision. There were scarcely one quarter of them natives of America. Half of them were Irish. The other quarter was English and Scotch.” ...
Prior to the election of the first Congress, the only assembly that covered the whole country, or was in any sense representative of it, was the General Synod or the Presbyterian Church. In1775 it met in Philadelphia, side by side with the new Congress of the States. Congress seemed to hesitate, but a Pastoral Letter issued by the Synod to all its congregations is reckoned to have been the chief cause which lead the colonies to resistance at that time. It is recorded, moreover, that the Governors of the Central and Southern colonies informed the Home Government that the Presbyterian clergy were to blame for the oncome of the Revolution, and for inflaming the people towards rebellion. Now since the great majority of Presbyterian clergy and people were either of Ulster origin or Ulster descent, we have here the clearest testimony to the enthusiasm of Ulster-Americans for the war effort. Plowden states that “most of the successes in America were immediately owing to the vigor and courage of the Irish emigrants.” And it is clear that a similar impression must have prevailed in England, for Lord Mountjoy said in the House of Commons “We have lost America through the Irish;” and how else can you explain Horace Walpole’s famous jibe to the Cabinet? “I hear that our American cousin has run away with a Scotch-Irish parson.”
Pg 28-29 Readers will note the frequent mention or “Irish” and “Ireland” in the last two paragraphs. They can be quite certain that the words are of limited application, and that in all cases their meaning should be narrowed down... But it cannot be denied that the use of the wider terms has caused much misapprehension, so that, even in America, Ireland as a whole has been given credit which is not justly her due...
Let me pass on now to a few of the exploits of our people in the war. There was a battle fought at King’s Mountain, in South Carolina; and it is a moderate estimate to reckon half the population of that State as of Ulster origin at that time. Things were looking black just then, and even Washington’s brave spirit seemed to quail. “This is a dark hour,” he wrote, “and I don’t know what is to become of us.” In this battle, a body of American militia –we might call them Home Guard –after a forced march of four days, attacked and defeated a British force of twice its size, killed the British commander and 180 of his men, and took upwards of 1,000 prisoners. The five colonels, American Presbyterian elders, and the troops they commanded were of the same race and faith. Washington and Jefferson said that this battle was the turning point of the war.
Pg 29-30 I'm not including these individual men, anyone interested can find them in the book
A few words may be said here about the civil side of the war effort. In 1780 the army of the United Colonies was in sad condition, imperfectly supplied with equipment and munitions of war, disgracefully clad, and poorly fed. A number of patriotic citizens, [Ulster-Scots] hopeless of Congress action, subscribed a large sum of money to purchase equipment, clothing and food for their fighting men. I'm not including these individual men, anyone interested can find them in the book
[pg 31] Nothing, however, brings more conviction of the great part played by our people in the Revolution than to consider the number of American officers of high distinction who were of Ulster origin or descent. (I'm not including these individual men, anyone interested can find them in the book)
[pg 34-35] ...there is Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, General in the war of 1812, victor at New Orleans, and by-named Old Hickory then and forever. He was born in North Carolina shortly after his Ulster parents arrived in America.
[pg 35-37] The Civil War
The Civil War was the greatest and bloodiest war ever fought on American soil. But since it is outside the period with which we are most concerned, and does not belong to the making of the United States, it must have only a passing reference... Ulysses Grant... General George B.McClellan... General McPherson... Sam Houston, the maker of Texas... General JamesShields...
The military leadership of the South was brilliant, and the ranks were filled with men of Ulster stock in the grey uniforms of the Confederates...
[pg 37-38] ...The bloodiest single conflict of the war was fought between two regiments at Gettysburg, the 26th North Carolina Regiment and the 151st Pennsylvania Regiment. Both regiments were practically wiped out. Well might Colonel Johnston say in 1889: “The greatest losses in the war occurred when the iron soldiers of North Carolina and Pennsylvania, descendants of the same race and stock, met on the field of battle, and locked arms in the embrace of death.” ...The Rev. Dr. David Macrea, a Scots minister, on a visit to America, interviewed the great Commander of the Confederate Forces, General Robert E. Lee, and asked him, “What race do you believe makes the best soldiers?” General Lee answered: “The Scotch who came to this country by way of Ireland.”...
The fighting quality of Ulstermen has not deteriorated since this tribute was paid to it by Robert Lee. On the 1st July, 1916, the 36th Ulster Division went into battle on the Sonune... Conan Doyle, in his history of British campaigns in France and Flanders, declares that “all soldiers would agree that, among all these heroes of the Somme, there was not one which could at its highest claim more than equality of achievement that day with the men of Ulster.”
The Declaration of Independence and the Presidents
... And the only signature on it for a month was the name of a man whose ancestors werePresbyterians from County Down, John Hancock, President of Congress and Governor of Massachusetts.
[pg 39-41] Let us take a look at some of the other signatures to this great document.
Thomas McKean –his father sailed in one of the five ships in 1718, and settled in New Derry...
...the list men of Ulster origin who have held the great office of President of the United States is even more impressive. Up till the present time [book published in 1951] there have been thirty-one Presidents. Very nearly half of these, either on the paternal or maternal side, have had the Ulster blood: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Of Vice-Presidents... Yet no Irishman except of Ulster Protestant stock has ever been called to the White House. (Note: John Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic President).
[pg 41-42] After the war of the Revolution there were thirteen States. Of the first Governors of these States, seven were of Ulster origin...
The Church
Oh, who can tell how much we owe to thee,
Makemie, and to labors such as thine,
For all that makes America the shrine
Of faith untrammeled and conscience free?
Stand here, gray stone, and consecrate the sod,
Where sleeps this brave Scots-Irish man of God. –Van Dyke
The founder of the great American Presbyterian Church was the Rev. Francis Makemie of Ramelton. Year after year, the minutes of the Synod of Ulster, and of the Secession Synod, record the names of ministers going to America, the licentiates ordained for America, of licentiates and students removing to America. In 1760, that is in less than forty years after the arrival of the Ulster settlers, there were 300 congregations to add to the handful that had been established before their coming. In 1705 there were just seven congregations. A Pennsylvania minister, writing in 1744, said that “all our congregations except two or three are chiefly made up of people from Ireland.” Makemie founded the first Presbytery... Nearly 300 ministers, of Ulster extraction, are known to have served in the ministry of American Presbyterian Churches in the period 1680-1820...
[pg 42-43] Education
It must also be said that these people of ours took with them to America that zeal for education that is their heritage from John Knox. They founded schools all over the country. They were pioneers, and their ministers had to be pioneers too. They had to go with their people, and in the wilderness there was no one but the minister qualified to teach the young... They were our people who founded the famed Log College which gave birth to the great University of Princeton, and not only to it, but also to Jefferson College, to Hampden Sidney College, to the University of North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, and to Washington and Lee University in Virginia... Dr. Hogg of New Jersey said in 1928: “Ninety percent, of the primitive religious, educational, and university work done in America was done by the Scotch-Irish.”
[pg 43-44] Abolition and the Press
Again, it is commonly believed that the agitation for the freedom of the slaves began among the Puritans of Boston and New England. This belief has no foundation in fact. The agitation began among the fold from our province. Forty years before any anti-slavery movement started in New England, the Reformed Presbyterians of South Carolina and East Tennessee debarred all slaveholders from Communion. In 1820 John Rankin said that it was safer to make Abolition speeches in Kentucky or Tennessee than in the North. The speakers at an Abolition meeting in Boston were mobbed as late as 1833. And one of the most active of the Northern Abolitionists was Horace Greeley, who was from New Deny.
Of merchant princes...
New York is proud of its “first families.” Which of them can compare in eminence and public service with the Routledges, the Calhouns, the Breckinridges, the Polks, the McClellans, the McDowells, the Pattons and the Prestons... all were from this Ulster emigrant from the city of Derry.”
[pg 44-46] Entirely an Ulster-Irish Achievement
...We are not willing to lose the credit for these achievements of our people. We are not willing that this credit should be stolen from those to whom it belongs, and made part and parcel of a tireless propaganda for our political extinction.
There are some writers who detail truly, as they think, and without malicious intent, the contribution of “Irishmen” to the making of the United States... to excuse them on the ground that an Ulsterman is an Irishman is beside the point, for he might also be truthfully described as a European. The far criticism of the half-truth in this instance is that it misrepresents...
We are entitled to protest against theft of this kind. We are not to remain dumb when achievements such as have been enumerated in these pages are calmly seized by Irish Republicans, and used as weapons to gain sympathy in America for the Republican cause... These are the deeds of our kindred and not theirs. This is the record of Protestant Ulster. There are individual Southern Irishmen here and there, and some names of distinction such as Carroll, Barry, Moylan, and Sullivan. Let these and their like be named with honor; but to state facts is not to appeal to religious prejudice, and the fact is that Southern Irishmen made no important contribution to American freedom.
[pg 46-47] Why? Because they were not there to make it. There was no substantial body of them in America, not even in Maryland. There was no emigration from Southern Ireland, except in the tiniest of trickles, till the 19th century.
Consider these facts. It is generally agreed that the population of United States at the close of the war was slightly over three millions. This population was not compressed in large cities and towns...
Now it is undisputed that in 1784 there were only 20 priests in the whole of the United Statesfrom the Atlantic to the Mississippi. How could 20 priests minister to a large fraction of three million people so widely scattered and in such a vast area? Why, in the same area, and at the same time were there at least 200 ministers of Ulster origin; there were ministers from Scotland in large numbers; there were ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church; there was the great body of Congregationalist ministers; and there were some Methodists and Baptists.
Again, it is undisputed that the first Roman Catholic ‘bishop in the United States was not consecrated till nearly ten years after the last battle of the war...
[pg 47-48] Bishop England, writing of this period immediately following the war, mentions “the scattered Catholic,” and “the few who exercised the ministry.” He says that when he came to America in 1820, he saw an estimate of the Roman Catholic population at the time... The figure he saw was 100,000. The total population then was ten millions. It is true that Bishop England thought that estimate of his people too low. For our part we need neither accept it nor reject it... in the total population of Southern Irish, even 39 years after Yorktown, must have been few and far between.
Yet this same bishop declared, in a statement worthy to be set beside the Nationalist Partyletter to President Wilson near the close of the last war, that “the best, the most gallant and hardy portion of the American troops, the Pennsylvania Line, was chiefly composed of Irish Catholics.” The bishop’s imagination was colossal. The Pennsylvania Line was chiefly composed of Ulster Protestants and the descendants of Ulster Protestants.
Arthur Young was a reliable observer, whose “Tour in Ireland” is... information used by many historians. Writing of this emigration which was still going on during his tour (1780), he declares: “The Catholics never went; they seem not only tied to the country, but almost to the parish in which their ancestors lived.” Gordon (History of Ireland, II., 216) has a similar story to tell. Indeed it was just because the emigration was Protestant that several districts in Ulster that were predominately Protestant are now predominantly Roman Catholic.
[pg 48-50] President Theodore Roosevelt, in his History of New York, does not mince his words. “It is a curious fact,” he says, “that in the Revolutionary war, the Germans and the Catholic Irish should have furnished the bulk of the auxiliaries to the regular English soldiers; butthe fiercest and most ardent Americans of all were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants.” And the American Owen Wister is even more outspoken: “Americans are being told in these days that we owe a debt of support to Irish independence, because the Irish fought with us in our own struggle for independence. Yes, the Irish did, and we do owe them a debt of support. But it was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolution, and not the Green Irish.”
Many Americans are misled by Republican propaganda. We ask them to remember to whom it is that they largely own their freedom; we ask them to remember... that Southern Ireland was no more in the war that she is in this one, and that she made no mark on the United States till the 19th century.
But we do ask that American opinion on the Ulster question should be guided by knowledge and understanding rather than by Republican clamor. We do ask that the American people should thoughtfully and fairly consider the facts, the facts of our position here, and the facts of their own history over there. Knowledge brings understanding, and the child of understanding is sympathy. We ask for all three, and it is we who have the right to ask.
[pg 50-1]
They were Twain when they crossed the sea,
And often their folk had warred;
But side by side, on the ramparts wide,
They cheered as the gates were barred;
And they cheered as they passed their King
To the ford that daunted none,
For, field or wall, it was each for all
When the Lord had made them One.
Thistle and Rose, they twined them close
When their fathers crossed the sea,
And they dyed them red, the live and the dead,
Where the blue-starred lint grows free
Here in the Northern sun,
Till his way was plain, He led the Twain,
And he forged them into One.
They were One when they crossed the sea
To the land of hope and dream.
Salute them now, whom none could cow,
Nor hold in light esteem!
Whose footsteps far in peace and war
Still sought the setting sun!
With a dauntless word and a long bright sword –
The Twain whom God made One!
Buy the eBook Ulster Sails West by William F. Marshall. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1950. pg 10-11: sets out the dreadful state of affairs.
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=9LwpJ6vDsdMC&rdid=book-9LwpJ6vDsdMC&rdot=1&source=gbs_vpt_read&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_viewport
Blog Post (Historical Misc): Arent Stevens from Schenectady, NY to Canada
History of Fulton County: Embracing Early Discoveries. Pub 1892. Includes the “character” of the Scotland Highlanders who were tenant farmers of Kingborough under the supervision of Sir William Johnson. They were Gaelic speaking Highlanders, who, after the ruin of the Pretender’s cause at Culloden, had been exiled to America. The Macdonalds, from which clan many of Johnson’s Kingsborough tenants came, were among the most powerful and warlike of all the Highlanders.
*Blog Post (Historical Misc): Ulster and Scots-Irish Surnames. Related Links at the end of the page. http://historicalandmisc.blogspot.com/2016/03/ulster-and-scots-irish-surnames.html *
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.