Ebook The Scotch-Irish

O the thoughtful student of American history in its entirety, one of the most interesting aspects of the subject comes from its consideration in connection with the part performed by the scotch-irish in helping to unite the thirteen original colonies. Although sometimes ignored, one important fact needs to be realized before we can properly estimate the forces and in?uences which operated to bring about and perpetuate this union. This fact, which relates peculiarly to the people whose genesis and development have now been passed in review is, that, prior to the Revolution, no other one people, of uniform race, customs, religion, and political principles, made such extensive settlements in so many of the thirteen American colonies as did the Scotch and scotch-irish. While it is true that New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were all originally settled by emigrants from different parts of England, yet the three English populations of those colonies probably differed more, one from another, in all things but a common language, than did the majority of them from the scotch-irish. In New England the English settlers were Puritans, individualists, and republicans — in principles the exact opposites of the Eng lish in Virginia and Carolina, who were Episcopalians, Royalists, and upholders of a slaveholding aristocracy. However, neither differed more from one another than both differed from the English of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who were Quakers, persecuted in New England and Virginia alike, and themselves the only considerable body of English settlers in America who consistently followed their professions of religious tolerance. In Maryland, the English Cavaliers were of the Romish and Episcopal faiths, both practically united when it came to the question of driving Puritans and other dissenters from that colony. Indeed, the settlement of the English along the Atlantic seaboard in three widely separated colonies, under different laws, religions, and systems of government was chie?y due to the fact that their component elements were so radically different from and irreconcilable with one another, that at first they could not be combined.