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Source: Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989) p. 77. Scotch-Irish The Scotch-Irish are usually thought of as descendants of Lowland Presbyterians who settled on the "Plantations" established in the north Ireland province of Ulster by James I in 1609. Actually, Scots from the Hebrides had been in Ulster for many centuries before that; they constituted a Celtic subculture that was neither quite Irish nor Scottish. By the early 19th century they had become the industrious and frugal Presbyterians of the stereotype, but their massive migrations to America had taken place earlier. Scotch-Irish filled the southern backcountry from the late 17th century until the Revolution, and there they were able to retain many of their ancient ways. As much as any group, they stamped the South with its enduring traits. They have been characterized as a leisurely folk who preferred herding to tillage, telling tall tales to accomplishing, talking and listening to reading and writing; they have been seen as improvident and disdainful of accumulating worldly goods; they were said to be violent and tending toward extremes of apathy or enthusiasm in politics as in religion; they appeared at once clannish and hospitable, oriented toward the extended family rather than toward an abstract community. Upwards of 250,000 Scotch-Irish migrated to America before the Revolution. Many went to the Carolinas and some went to upper New England, but most landed in Philadelphia, whence they moved southwestward in a steady stream. From 1776 until the end of the 19th century they comprised the largest single ethnic group in the white population of the southern interior. During the Revolution they were fiercely anti-English, as they had always been, and they provided a disproportionate share of the soldiers in the Continental armyóas they would do in all America's wars during the 19th century. They had the reputation of being fearless, impetuous, and undisciplined soldiers. In politics, never having acquired the English habit of obedience to central authority, they were intensely local-minded. Most therefore opposed ratification of the federal Constitution, and they formed the backbone of the Jeffersonian Republican party and, later, the Jacksonian Democratic party. Grady McWhiney and
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