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How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
Broadway
October 2005
On Sale: October 11, 2005
384 pages
ISBN: 0767916891
EAN: 9780767916899
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Historical | Non-Fiction Political | Non-Fiction History
In his first work of nonfiction, bestselling novelist James
Webb tells the epic story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose
lives and worldview were dictated by resistance, conflict,
and struggle, and who, in turn, profoundly influenced the
social, political, and cultural landscape of America from
its beginnings through the present day. More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage
to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of
continuous warfare along the border between England and
Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s
Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and
400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth
century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with
them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but
also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla
fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute
individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military
tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the
attitudes and values of the military, of working class
America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of
American democracy itself. Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the full
journey of this remarkable cultural group, and the profound,
but unrecognized, role it has played in the shaping of
America. Written with the storytelling verve that has earned
his works such acclaim as "captivating... unforgettable"
(the Wall Street Journal on Lost Soliders), Scots-Irishman
James Webb, Vietnam combat veteran and former Naval
Secretary, traces the history of his people, beginning
nearly two thousand years ago at Hadrian’s Wall, when the
nation of Scotland was formed north of the Wall through
armed conflict in contrast to England’s formation to the
south through commerce and trade. Webb recounts the Scots’
odyssey—their clashes with the English in Scotland and then
in Ulster, their retreat from one war-ravaged land to
another. Through engrossing chronicles of the challenges the
Scots-Irish faced, Webb vividly portrays how they developed
the qualities that helped settle the American frontier and
define the American character. Born Fighting shows that the Scots-Irish were 40 percent of
the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers
Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam
Houston; they were the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Mark
Twain; and they have given America numerous great military
leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant,
Audie Murphy, and George S. Patton, as well as most of the
soldiers of the Confederacy (only 5 percent of whom owned
slaves, and who fought against what they viewed as an
invading army). It illustrates how the Scots-Irish redefined
American politics, creating the populist movement and giving
the country a dozen presidents, including Andrew Jackson,
Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill
Clinton. And it explores how the Scots-Irish culture of
isolation, hard luck, stubbornness, and mistrust of the
nation’s elite formed and still dominates blue-collar
America, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country
music. Both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human
drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary
America, Born Fighting reintroduces America to its most
powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group—one
too often ignored or taken for granted.
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