This extensively researched and long overdue examination of the journey of the Scots-Irish in America might shame a few elitist academic institutions into establishing departments of Scots-Irish studies.

Fleeing war and poverty, 250,000 to 400,000 Scots-Irish began in the early 1700s to migrate out of Scotland and Northern Ireland for the American colonies. These intrepid immigrants would come, “particularly in the South and the Ohio Valley, where their culture overwhelmed the English and German ethnic groups and defined the mores of the region,” to shape what it was to be an American. The tragic “irony,” observes James Webb, “is that modern America has forgotten who they were (and are) so completely that it is rare to find anyone who can even recognize their ethnic makeup or identify their amazing journey and their singular contributions.” Moreover, as the late Rodney Dangerfield would say, they “don’t get no respect.” These NASCAR, country music, old-time-religion loving working-class people are mostly caricatured as cultural primitives.

Webb, a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, a former assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy, and more recently a novelist, tries to correct this “gaping vacuum” in our understanding of American origins. On the way, he strives to restore to the 27 million Americans who can claim descent from the Scots-Irish a sense of pride in who they are and from whence they came. His social history is partly a tribute to a “forgotten people,” a family memoir, and a political polemic. He traces the Scots-Irish back to their origins as ancient Celtic warriors and hails “his people” (and, I might add, mine too) for having instilled in their young such noble virtues as courage, honor, patriotism, and loyalty to friends and family. He chronicles his family’s struggles, particularly that of his late father, to make something of themselves. Finally, he vents his anger toward those who slurred and ridiculed him and his ancestors.

The first-century A.D. construction of Hadrian’s Wall by the Romans separated the English and Scots both geographically and culturally. England was Romanized, while the Celtic peoples to the north were never conquered. England subsequently became Anglo-Saxon and Norman, while Scotland retained her Celtic culture. Under Norman rule, the English erected a military caste system while the Celts, for their part, developed a tribal system based on kinship ties rather than political hierarchy. The highly individualistic society of the Celts was characterized by loyalty to one’s kin and tribal chieftain. The less egalitarian society of England “encouraged,” as Webb observes, “the more nationalist form of racism.” Celtic kinship patterns of association “tended to embrace members of other ethnic groups rather than demean them.” In other words, the culture emphasized assimilative, collateral kinship connections rather than race and ethnicity. As long as individuals accepted “the values and mores of the extended family” they were accepted as “of the kin.”

“An offshoot,” of these kinship relations, Webb explains, are the “unusually strong feelings about military service held by so many Americans of Scottish and Irish descent.” Since the American Revolution, they have served in disproportionately large numbers in every war. “When it comes to fighting wars, [the Appalachian] mountain people have always been among the first to go.” A high proportion of the soldiers in the combat units of today’s volunteer military are Scots-Irish and Irish Catholic. Of all their cultural attributes, Webb clearly admires their love of battle the most.

Generations of warfare, from their medieval struggles against English rule, which produced such indomitable Scottish heroes as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, to their successful 17th-century defense of the city of Londonderry, forged a warrior culture. The cry “no surrender,” shouted by the Ulster Protestants to the besieging Catholic armies of the deposed King James II, typified the fierce determination of the Scots-Irish never to submit to a foe without a fight.

Unfortunately, the condition of the Ulster Scots under English rule worsened after their victory. The English government betrayed its loyal subjects in Northern Ireland by enacting laws that “forbade dissenting Protestants from teaching school, holding even minor positions in the government, or serving as officers in the militia.” The ensuing political chaos and bitterness resulting from Queen Anne’s Test Acts spawned a continual migratory flow out of Northern Ireland to the American colonies that did not cease until 1776. During the course of those migrations nearly “one-third of the entire Protestant population of Ireland left for America.” The “remembered tragedies of Northern Ireland” would shape these new arrivals and help “spur them into a new and sometimes fearsome wilderness.”

“Another powerful facet” that “played into the cultural development” of the Scots Irish was the Protestant Reformation. Populism and Calvinism combined “to create both the fundamentals of American-style democracy and the embryo of what would in the twentieth century be called America’s Bible Belt.” Their streak of confessional independence “provided the roots of a powerful and unrelenting populism.” The Presbyterian nonconformists instilled in them the view that the individual had the right to rebel against a policy that was “viewed to be immoral.” This principle would turn up in an altered form in the Southern Scotch-Irish statesman John C. Calhoun, who asserted the right of sovereign states to nullify unconstitutional federal laws.

The visceral dislike of the WASP elite for the mostly working-class Scots-Irish continues to fuel the present culture wars. The social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, were about more than a growing discontent over a prolonged war. They were manifestations of cultural conflict. Although Webb says that he was fully prepared for the bloody fighting he faced in Vietnam and even the suffering he endured during the two years of surgeries and physical therapy following his combat injuries, he admits that “few things … surprised” him “so completely as the world I entered a few years later when I arrived at the Georgetown Law Center” in 1972. His injuries had ended forever his dream of pursuing a career as a Marine Corps officer. “Had I not been wounded, I would never have gone to law school. And had I not gone to law school, I would never have comprehended the disdain that many of the advantaged in my generation felt for those who had fought in Vietnam, or the ingrained condescension of the nation’s elites toward my culture. And had I never been exposed to this unthinking arrogance, I would never have begun the journey of discovery that, over three decades, led to this book.”

Webb’s physical wounds healed, but he clearly bears the scars from the emotional injuries he suffered. “To have one’s life interrupted for years at an early age, and then to return not only without honor but also shouldering the blame for all the supposed evils of a war that others avoided, is the formula for long-term societal disability. And this is exactly what occurred.”

The gap between the world he had left and the world he had walked back into “was nearly total.” Almost everyone he knew in the Marine Corps “had pulled at least one tour of duty in Vietnam” while he met only a few combat veterans among Georgetown Law students. Most of the volunteers who served and died in Vietnam came “from traditionalist cultures such as the Scots-Irish.” On the other hand, Webb bitterly notes, “the generation’s academic elites largely sat out the war.”

Despite the popular impression of a ’60s “generation gap,” in reality “this rupture was along cultural and class lines, with racial issues sometimes blurring class distinctions.” The political radicals, who largely came from America’s political elite, fervently believed that “the American system was irretrievably broken,” while, on the other hand, “the traditionalists who were fighting the war” were “worrying that the American system as they knew it was being destroyed by the forces of dissent.”

The traditions of a rebellious political populism, a strict religious Calvinism, and the military instilled in the Scots-Irish a “values-based combativeness, an insistent egalitarianism, and a refusal to be dominated from above, no matter what the cost.” They are “unenvious of wealth, unafraid of the wielders of authority, unconscious of class, and also unwilling to consider themselves ethnically aloof—in most cases.” Individuality is more important to them than racial origin. Hence, unlike other self-identified hyphenated ethnic Americans, the modern game of identity politics is one they do not play.

They have, Webb insists, more power than they understand. Since neither major political party reflects completely their core concerns, they tend to be independent swing voters. In 1980 and 1984, they enthusiastically voted for Reagan (“perhaps the most Jacksonian president since Jackson himself”) but only reluctantly voted for Bush I in 1988. They either sat out the 1992 and 1996 elections or voted against the Republican presidential nominees. In 2000 and 2004, they returned to the Republican fold. “They have become spoilers because in their view American political elites, both Republican and Democrat, have grown together into an almost indiscernible ‘hybrid royalty’ that offers them little to choose from in terms of how the nation is actually being governed. Grand, useless speeches are made on issues such as flag-burning, homosexual marriage, and abortion, but little is said or done about such vital matters as the near-nationwide breakdown of public education, the mind-boggling rate of incarceration in America’s prison systems, or the blatant government-sponsored reverse discrimination inherent in what are now called diversity programs.” In other words, they think like many subscribers to The American Conservative.

Of all the issues, nothing provokes them more than the injustice of the diversity and affirmative-action programs. Webb claims these programs spring from “a false reading of history that focused only on the disadvantages that had accrued to blacks” while ignoring the vast socio-economic distinctions among whites. Income levels and educational attainments vary among white Americans as well as between whites and African-Americans, and 30 years of affirmative action and diversity quotas have only “exacerbated” these differences. The “untold story is that diversity among white cultures has been ignored, with the result that less-advantaged whites have often paid far beyond their percentage of the white population when quotas have been put into place for the benefit of minorities.”

The Scots-Irish have failed to use this evidence, Webb admits, to oppose these offending programs. Even if they did, they might not enjoy much success. The purpose of multicultural and diversity programs is not to nurture equity and fairness but to deconstruct the social and moral foundations of the organic, traditional society to which the Scots-Irish are attached. The Scots-Irish are on the wrong side of every issue—abortion, gay rights, secularization, affirmative action, expanding entitlement programs—that matters to cultural elites. From the perspective of the ruling culture, they are impediments to progress. They constitute what the late Sam Francis called the Middle American Radicals, who instinctively resist the encroachments of big government. Nevertheless, until they become more ethnically self-conscious, as Francis also urged, their interests will continue to be ignored.

While Webb fervently praises the fighting spirit of the Scots-Irish, he seems oblivious to the obvious fact that they have frequently been pawns in other people’s wars. Since the Battle of Culloden, the British have used the Scots as cannon fodder in their colonial adventures. Many of America’s greatest fighting men—Andrew Jackson, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton—and a high proportion of the soldiers in every war since the American Revolution have sprung from the Scots-Irish. Yet their otherwise commendable patriotism and fighting spirit have permitted the elite classes, who denigrate and even fear them, to manipulate these natural warriors into bearing the bloody brunt of their wars. Even Webb’s father, a Marine Corps officer, cautioned his young son in 1968 not to risk his life in a “strategically botched war.” Filled with dreams of becoming a Marine Corps general, however, Webb enthusiastically sought a combat assignment in that tragic, ill-considered war. He paid a heavy price for his rash—albeit courageous—decision, physically and emotionally, from which he has never fully recovered. As the Scots-Irish rush to support President Bush’s wars for democracy and human rights, they might well reflect on the time-honored axiom that discretion is the better part of valor.

This finely written study should inspire a renewed appreciation of the enduring contributions to American politics and culture of this formerly all but invisible tribe. 
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W. Wesley McDonald teaches political theory at Elizabethtown College and is the author of Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology.

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