Scotland's Mark on America by George Fraser Black

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SCOTLAND'S MARK ON AMERICA

By GEORGE FRASER BLACK, PH.D.

With a Foreword By JOHN FOORD

_Published by_

The Scottish Section of "America's Making" New York, 1921

FOREWORD

It has been said that the Scot is never so much at home as when he is
abroad. Under this half-jesting reference to one of the
characteristics of our race, there abides a sober truth, namely, that
the Scotsman carries with him from his parent home into the world
without no half-hearted acceptance of the duties required of him in
the land of his adoption. He is usually a public-spirited citizen, a
useful member of society, wherever you find him. But that does not
lessen the warmth of his attachment to the place of his birth, or the
land of his forbears. Be his connection with Scotland near or remote,
there is enshrined in the inner sanctuary of his heart, memories,
sentiments, yearnings, that are the heritage of generations with whom
love of their country was a dominant passion, and pride in the deeds
that her children have done an incentive to effort and an antidote
against all that was base or ignoble.

It is a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human
freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the
sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the
sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien,
and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions
under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender
attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of
the Motherland, keep in touch with the simple annals of our
childhood's home, or the home of our kin, bask in the fireside glow of
its homely humor, or dwell in imagination amid the haunts of old
romance, we are the better Americans for the Scottish heritage from
which heart and mind alike derive inspiration and delight.

It is as difficult to separate the current of Scottish migration to
the American Colonies, or to the United States that grew out of them,
from the larger stream which issued from England, as it is to
distinguish during the last two hundred years the contributions by
Scotsmen from those of Englishmen to the great body of English
literature. We have the first census of the new Republic, in the year
1790, and an investigator who classified this enumeration according to
what he conceived to be the nationality of the names, found that the
total free, white, population numbering 3,250,000 contained 2,345,844
people of English origin; 188,589 of Scottish origin, and 44,273 of
Irish origin. The system of classification is manifestly loose, and
the distribution of parent nationalities entirely at variance with
known facts. That part of the population described as Irish was
largely Ulster-Scottish, the true Irish never having emigrated in any
considerable numbers until they felt the pressure of the potato
famine, fifty years later. There is excellent authority for the
statement that, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War one-third of
the entire population of Pennsylvania was of Ulster-Scottish origin. A
New England historian, quoted by Whitelaw Reid, counts that between
1730 and 1770 at least half a million souls were transferred from
Ulster to the Colonies--more than half of the Presbyterian population
of Ulster--and that at the time of the Revolution they made one-sixth
of the total population of the nascent Republic. Another authority
fixes the inhabitants of Scottish ancestry in the nine Colonies south
of New England at about 385,000. He counts that less than half of the
entire population of the Colonies was of English origin, and that
nearly, or quite one-third of it, had a direct Scottish ancestry.

These conclusions find powerful support in the number of distinguished
men whom the Scots and the Ulstermen contributed to the Revolutionary
struggle, and to the public life of the early days of the United
States. Out of Washington's twenty-two brigadier generals, nine were
of Scottish descent, and one of the greatest achievements of the
war--the rescue of Kentucky and the whole rich territory northwest of
the Ohio, from which five States were formed--was that of General
George Rogers Clark, a Scottish native of Albert County, Virginia.
When the Supreme Court of the United States was first organized by
Washington three of the four Associate Justices were of the same
blood--one a Scot and two Ulster-Scots. When the first Chief Justice,
John Jay, left the bench, his successor, John Rutledge, was an
Ulster-Scot. Washington's first cabinet contained four members--two of
them were Scotch and the third was an Ulster-Scot. Out of the
fifty-six members who composed the Congress that adopted the
Declaration of Independence eleven were of Scottish descent. It was in
response to the appeal of a Scot, John Witherspoon, that the
Declaration was signed; it is preserved in the handwriting of an
Ulster-Scot who was Secretary of the Congress; it was first publicly
read to the people by an Ulster-Scot, and first printed by a third
member of the same vigorous body of early settlers.

George Bancroft will hardly be accused of holding a brief for the Scot
in American history but, with all his New England predilections, he
frankly records this conclusion: "We shall find the first voice
publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great
Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of
New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians." It was Patrick Henry, a Scot, who kindled the popular
flame for independence. The foremost, the most irreconcilable, the
most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were
those whom the bishops and Lord Donegal & Company had been pleased to
drive out of Ulster.

The distinguished place which men of Scottish or of Ulster origin had
asserted for themselves in the councils of the Colonies was not lost
when the Colonies became independent States. Among the first of the
thirteen original States two-thirds were of either Scottish or
Ulster-Scottish origin. Of the men who have filled the great office of
President of the United States, eleven out of the whole twenty-five
come under the same category. About half the Secretaries of the
Treasury of the Government of the United States have been of Scottish
descent, and nearly a third of the Secretaries of State.

But it is perhaps in the intangible things that go to the making of
national character that the Scottish contribution to the making of
America has been most notable. In 1801, the population of the whole of
Scotland was but little over a million and a half, and behind that
there were at least eight centuries of national history. Behind that,
too, were all the long generations of toil and strife in which the
Scottish character was being molded into the forms that Scott and
Burns made immortal. It is a character full of curious contrasts, with
its strong predilection for theology and metaphysics on one side, and
for poetry and romance on the other. Hard, dry and practical in its
attitude to the ordinary affairs of life, it is apt to catch fire from
a sudden enthusiasm, as if volatility were its dominant note and
instability its only fixed attribute. And so it has come about that
side by side with tomes of Calvinistic divinity, there has been
transmitted to Scotsmen an equally characteristic product of the mind
of their race--a body of folksong, of ballad poetry, of legend and of
story in that quaint and copious Doric speech which makes so direct an
appeal to the hearts of men whether they are to the manner born or
not. It is surely a paradox that a nation which, in the making, had
the hardest kind of work to extract a scanty living from a stubborn
soil, and still harder work to defend their independence, their
liberties, their faith from foes of their own kindred, should be best
known to the world for the romantic ideals they have cherished and the
chivalrous follies for which their blood has been shed.

But, it is well to remember that long before the Reformers of the
sixteenth century founded the parish school system of Scotland, the
monasteries had their schools and so had the parish churches; there
were high schools in the burghs and song schools of remarkable
excellence. The light of learning may have waxed dim at times, but it
was not from an illiterate land that Scottish scholars carried into
Europe all through the Middle Ages the name and fame of their country,
any more than it was from a people unversed in the arts of war that
Scottish soldiers went abroad to fight foreign battles, giving now a
Constable to France, a General-in-Chief to Russia and still again a
Lieutenant to Gustavus Adolphus. If evidence were needed of the vigor
of the Scottish race, it is readily forthcoming in the fact that for
five hundred years the Land O'Cakes enriched the world with the
surplus of her able men.

Nurse of heroes, nurse of martyrs, nurse of freemen, are titles which
belong of right to our Motherland and she has been justified of her
children, at home and abroad. The rolls of honor of many countries and
many climes bear their names; there is no field of distinction whether
it be of thought or of action that has not witnessed their triumphs.
That Scotland has yielded more than her share of the men who have gone
forth to the conquest of the world is largely due to the fact that it
was part of her discipline that men must first conquer themselves. The
weakest of them felt that restraining influence, and the striving
after the Scottish ideal, however feeble, has been a protection
against sinking into utter baseness. The most wayward scions of the
Scottish family have known that influence, and have borne testimony to
the beauty of the homely virtues which they failed to practice and the
nobility of aspirations which fell short of controlling their life.

It belongs to the character and antecedents of Scotsmen that the
attribute of national independence should take so high a place among
the objects of human effort and desire. It was because Scotland
settled for all time, six hundred years ago, her place as an
independent State that she proved herself capable of begetting men
like John Knox, Robert Burns and Walter Scott. It is because the vigor
of the Scottish race and the adaptiveness of the Scottish genius
remain to-day unimpaired, that the lustre of Scottish-names shone so
brilliantly during the World War. It may be confidently asserted that,
whether regarded as a race or a people no members of the great
English-speaking family did more promptly, more cheerfully or more
courageously make the sacrifices required to perform their full part
in the struggle to defend the freedom that belongs to our common
heritage and to preserve the ideals without which we should not regard
life as worth living. The union, centuries old, in the Scottish mind
and heart of the most uncompromising devotion to individual liberty
with the most fervid patriotism, is a sentiment of which the world
stands greatly in need to-day. We need not go far to find evidence of
how perilous it is to sink regard for the great conception of human
brotherhood in a narrow, nationalistic concern for individual
interests. In the Scottish conception of liberty, _duties_ have always
been rated as highly as _rights_; it has been a constructive, not a
destructive formula; it has been an inspiration to raise men out of
themselves, not to prompt them to indulge in antics of promiscuous
leveling. The kind of democracy for which Scotsmen have deemed that
the world should be made safe is a human brotherhood, indeed, but a
brotherhood imbued with the generous rivalry of effort, the enthusiasm
of emulous achievement, and not one of inglorious, monotonous and
colorless equality.

JOHN FOORD

CONTENTS

Foreword 3

Scottish Emigration to the American Colonies 11

Some Prominent Scots and Scots Families 24

Scots as Colonial and Provincial Governors 32

Scots and the Declaration of Independence 36

Scots as Signers of the Declaration of Independence 38

Scots in the Presidency 40

Scots as Vice-Presidents 41

Scots as Cabinet Officers 42

Scots in the Senate 45

Scots in the House of Representatives 47

Scots in the Judiciary 48

Scots as Ambassadors 51

Scots as State Governors 53

Scots in the Army 60

Scots in the Navy 65

Scots as Scientists 67

Scots as Physicians 73

Scots in Education 76

Scots in Literature 81

Scots in the Church and Social Welfare 84

Scots as Lawyers 87

Scots in Art, Architecture, etc. 88

Scots as Inventors 95

Scots as Engineers 99

Scots in Industries 101

Scots in Banking, Finance, Insurance and Railroads 105

Scots as Journalists, Publishers and Typefounders 108

Some Prominent Scots in New York City 113

Scottish Societies in the United States 115

Conclusion 116

List of Principal Authorities Referred to 117

Index 119

"No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world's
history as the Scots have done. No people have a greater right to be
proud of their blood."--_James Anthony Froude_.

* * * * *

SCOTTISH EMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN COLONIES

Scottish emigration to America came in two streams--one direct from
the motherland and the other through the province of Ulster in the
north of Ireland. Those who came by this second route are usually
known as "Ulster Scots," or more commonly as "Scotch-Irish," and they
have been claimed as Irishmen by Irish writers in the United States.
This is perhaps excusable but hardly just. Throughout their residence
in Ireland the Scots settlers preserved their distinctive Scottish
characteristics, and generally described themselves as "the Scottish
nation in the north of Ireland." They, of course, like the early
pioneers in this country, experienced certain changes through the
influence of their new surroundings, but, as one writer has remarked,
they "remained as distinct from the native population as if they had
never crossed the Channel. They were among the Irish but not of them."
Their sons, too, when they attended the classes in the University of
Glasgow, signed the matriculation register as "A Scot of Ireland."
They did not intermarry with the native Irish, though they did
intermarry to some extent with the English Puritans and with the
French Huguenots. (These Huguenots were colonies driven out of France
by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and induced to
settle in the north of Ireland by William III. To this people Ireland
is indebted for its lace industry, which they introduced into that
country.)

Again many Irish-American writers on the Scots Plantation of Ulster
have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gaelic
origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people
of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in racial derivation
as if they had come from the North of England." Parker, the historian
of Londonderry, New Hampshire, speaking of the early Scots settlers in
New England, has well said: "Although they came to this land from
Ireland, where their ancestors had a century before planted
themselves, yet they retained unmixed the national Scotch character.
Nothing sooner offended them than to be called Irish. Their antipathy
to this appellation had its origin in the hostility then existing in
Ireland between the Celtic race, the native Irish, and the English and
Scotch colonists." Belknap, in his _History of New Hampshire_ (Boston,
1791) quotes a letter from the Rev. James MacGregor (1677-1729) to
Governor Shute in which the writer says: "We are surprised to hear
ourselves termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all
for the British Crown and liberties against the Irish papists, and
gave all tests, of our loyalty, which the government of Ireland
required, and are always ready to do the same when demanded."

Down to the present day the descendants of these Ulster Scots settlers
living in the United States who have maintained an interest in their
origin, always insist that they are of Scottish and not of Irish
origin. On this point it will be sufficient to quote the late Hon.
Leonard Allison Morrison, of New Hampshire. Writing twenty-five years
ago he said: "I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with
Rev. McGregor of Londonderry, and neither _they_ nor any of their
descendants were willing to be called 'merely Irish.' I have twice
visited," he adds, "the parish of Aghadowney, Co. Londonderry, from
which they came, in Ireland, and all that locality is filled, not with
'Irish' but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure Scotch blood to-day,
after more than _200_ years." The mountaineers of Tennessee and
Kentucky are largely the descendants of these same Ulster Scots, and
their origin is conclusively shown by the phrase used by mothers to
their unruly children: "If you don't behave, Clavers [i.e.,
Claverhouse] will get you."

If we must continue to use the hyphen when referring to these early
immigrants it is preferable to use the term "Ulster Scot" instead of
"Scotch-Irish," as was pointed out by the late Whitelaw Reid, because
it does not confuse the race with the accident of birth, and because
the people preferred it themselves. "If these Scottish and
Presbyterian colonists," he says, "must be called Irish because they
had been one or two generations in the north of Ireland, then the
Pilgrim Fathers, who had been one generation or more in Holland, must
by the same reasoning be called Dutch or at the very least English
Dutch."

To understand the reasons for the Scots colonization of Ulster and the
replantation in America it is necessary to look back three centuries
in British history. On the crushing of the Irish rebellion under Sir
Cahir O'Dogherty in 1607 about 500,000 acres of forfeited land in the
province of Ulster were at the disposal of the crown. At the
suggestion of King James the I. of England, Ulster was divided into
lots and offered to colonists from England. Circumstances, however,
turned what was mainly intended to be an English enterprise into a
Scottish one. Scottish participation "which does not seem to have been
originally regarded as important," became eventually, as Ford points
out, the mainstay of the enterprise. "Although from the first there
was an understanding between [Sir Arthur] Chichester and the English
Privy Council that eventually the plantation would be opened to Scotch
settlers, no steps were taken in that direction until the plan had
been matured ... The first public announcement of any Scottish
connection with the Ulster plantation appears in a letter of March 19,
1609, from Sir Alexander Hay, the Scottish secretary resident at the
English Court, to the Scottish Privy Council at Edinburgh." In this
communication Hay announced that the king "out of his unspeikable love
and tindir affectioun" for his Scottish subjects had decided that they
were to be allowed a share, and he adds, that here is a great
opportunity for Scotland since "we haif greitt advantaige of
transporting of our men and bestiall [i.e., live stock of a farm] in
regairde we lye so neir to that coiste of Ulster." Immediately on
receipt of this letter the Scottish Privy Council made public
proclamation of the news and announced that those of them "quho ar
disposit to tak ony land in Yreland" were to present their desires and
petitions to the Council. The first application enrolled was by "James
Andirsoun portionair of Litle Govane," and by the 14th of September
seventy-seven Scots had come forward as purchasers. If their offers
had been accepted, they would have possessed among them 141,000 acres
of land. In 1611, in consequence of a rearrangement of applicants the
number of favored Scots was reduced to fifty-nine, with eighty-one
thousand acres of land at their disposal. Each of these "Undertakers,"
as they were called, was accompanied to his new home by kinsmen,
friends, and tenants, as Lord Ochiltree, for instance, who is
mentioned as having arrived "accompanied with thirty-three followers,
a minister, some tenants, freeholders, [and] artificers." By the end
of 1612 the emigration from Scotland is estimated to have reached
10,000. Indeed, before the end of this year so rapidly had the traffic
increased between Scotland and Ireland that the passage between the
southwest of Scotland and Ulster "is now become a commoun and are
ordinarie ferrie," the boat-men of which were having a rare time of it
by charging what they pleased for the passage or freight. In the
selection of the settlers measures were carefully taken that they
should be "from the inwards part of Scotland," and that they should be
so located in Ulster that "they may not mix nor intermarry" with "the
mere Irish." For the most part the settlers appear to have been
selected from the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, and
Dumfries. Emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily and the English historian Carte estimated, after
diligent documentary study, that by 1641 there were in Ulster 100,000
Scots and 20,000 English settlers. In 1656 it was proposed by the
Irish government that persons "of the Scottish nation desiring to come
into Ireland" should be prohibited from settling in Ulster or County
Louth, but the scheme was not put into effect. Governmental opposition
notwithstanding emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily, and after the Revolution of 1688 there seems to
have been a further increase. Archbishop Synge estimated that by 1715
not less than 50,000 Scottish families had settled in Ulster during
these twenty-seven years. It should be also mentioned that "before the
Ulster plantation began there was already a considerable Scottish
occupation of the region nearest to Scotland. These Scottish
settlements were confined to counties Down and Antrim, which were not
included in the scheme of the plantation. Their existence facilitated
Scottish emigration to the plantation and they were influential in
giving the plantation the Scottish character which it promptly
acquired. Although planned to be in the main an English settlement,
with one whole county turned over to the city of London alone, it soon
became in the main a Scottish settlement."

The Scots were not long settled in Ulster before misfortune and
persecution began to harass them. The Irish rebellion of 1641, said by
some to have been an outbreak directed against the Scottish and
English settlers, regarded by the native Irish as intruders and
usurpers, caused them much suffering; and Harrison says that for
"several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the
American plantations." The Revolution of 1688 was also long and bloody
in Ireland and the sufferings of the settlers reached a climax in the
siege of Londonderry (April to August, 1688). They suffered also from
the restrictions laid upon their industries and commerce by the
English government. These restrictions, and later the falling in of
leases, rack-renting by the landlords, payment of tithes for support
of a church with which they had no connection, and several other
burdens and annoyances, were the motives which impelled emigration to
the American colonies from 1718 onwards. Five ships bearing seven
hundred Ulster Scots emigrants arrived in Boston on August 4, 1718,
under the leadership of Rev. William Boyd. They were allowed to select
a township site of twelve miles square at any place on the frontiers.
A few settled at Portland, Maine, at Wicasset, and at Worcester and
Haverhill, Massachusetts, but the greater number finally at
Londonderry, New Hampshire. In 1723-4 they built a parsonage and a
church for their minister, Rev. James MacGregor. In six years they had
four schools, and within nine years Londonderry paid one-fifteenth of
the state tax. Previous to the Revolution of 1776 ten distinct
settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of
which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the
descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen.
John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan,
Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration
from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom 10,000 were weavers."

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