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00:00I think that the Scotch-Irish haven't been basically held under somebody's thumb for so
00:20many centuries. When they got here, it's like nobody's gonna take it away from us this time.
00:26That's a driving force in our politics now, is people have basically gotten fed up with
00:34all this government intrusion and everything, and it's like, you know, we want our freedoms
00:40back. We want to preserve our freedoms.
00:47A lot of these mountain people, they kind of lived their lives based on what this country
00:52was founded on. God and freedom.
00:59If we can fall back to what our forefathers done, and that's work, and believe in something,
01:05and believe in each other, and move right on forward, I think things would flow out a whole
01:09lot smoother than everybody working against one another.
01:12To many Americans, freedom and equality are the touchstones of their democracy.
01:39The 2016 presidential election tested those ideals and divided the nation.
01:49Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fought for the hearts and minds of middle America, appealing
01:59to their fears and concerns, their values and their aspirations.
02:06But it was a speech by the outgoing president, Barack Obama, that caught the attention of a
02:12feature writer at the Washington Post, Francis Stead Sellers.
02:18Barack Obama made this extraordinary speech before the Democratic National Convention.
02:24And Obama looked back to Americans' history and trying to persuade people to vote for Hillary Clinton,
02:30his successor, talking about the great values of the Constitution, the legal system in which this
02:35country is based. And in the middle of it, he suddenly talked about his Scots-Irish grandparents.
02:40See, my grandparents, they came from the heartland. Their ancestors began settling there about 200 years ago.
02:52They were Scots-Irish mostly. And my grandparents explained that folks in these parts, they didn't like show-offs.
03:00They didn't admire braggarts or bullies. They didn't respect mean-spiritedness or folks who were always looking for shortcuts in life.
03:10Instead, what they valued were traits like honesty and hard work.
03:19The Scots-Irish are as diverse in their views and politics as anyone else in America.
03:29But when Barack Obama spoke about the values of his Scots-Irish grandparents,
03:34it was a direct appeal to former Democrats thinking of voting for Trump,
03:40particularly the people of the Rust Belt and Appalachian Mountains,
03:44many of whom can trace their roots to Ulster and the people we call the Ulster Scots.
03:52People had been talking about a Southern vote,
03:54but there wasn't very much awareness of Scots-Irish as a cultural identity.
03:59Very few people self-identify as Scots-Irish or have done historically in census.
04:04But they represent or their cultural footprint is enormous
04:08and one that I think Donald Trump realised he could play into.
04:14Trump became one of us, and the greatest tool that you can have in politics
04:20is if you can establish yourself as us versus them.
04:23And people are hurting. They really are, with the loss of jobs,
04:28and, you know, they're looking at the way we were.
04:31It's what they're looking at, and they want those, you know, good times to come back.
04:37Democrats go after class. Republicans go after culture, and culture wins every time.
04:49Well, I'll be talking to people, and I ask them about their ethnicity,
04:52and they say, well, I'm English or, you know, some German or whatever.
04:56And, you know, everybody here that's lived here for any length of time has Scots-Irish genes.
05:06And it's just strange that we've never grasped, as a country, the power of this culture,
05:13much less identified.
05:15To some degree there is truth in the idea that the Scots-Irish have lost their identity
05:26in a broader American character.
05:29When I'm talking with people, often with a group of students, I'll ask them,
05:40how do they identify themselves ethnically?
05:42And to be Scots-Irish is very common.
05:46Then I'll ask them, what does that mean, Scots-Irish?
05:50And usually they think of, well, somewhere, a grandparent or great-grandparent,
05:56one came from Ireland, the other came from Scotland, and they married,
05:59and then all their children became Scots-Irish.
06:02Well, of course, that is far from the actual history of these people.
06:07But it does speak to that idea that we no longer have a firm grasp
06:12of who these people are.
06:22The Scots-Irish are very much part of the American frontier tradition.
06:25And they were the Davy Crockett's.
06:29The people who were able to take America into the West.
06:35That's very much part of America's founding mythology and has been maintained so.
06:38But again, very often without the term Scots-Irish attached to it.
06:46This is a culture that has almost become invisible.
06:49And yet, if you look at what the Scots-Irish did, the lasting contributions they've made,
06:58you see it everywhere.
07:02You don't see it in self-identification, I'm Scots-Irish.
07:05You see it in the traditions in the American military.
07:08You see it in country music, which came right out of the Ulster migration.
07:13You see it most importantly in the form of government, that Andrew Jackson and people who succeeded him in office,
07:23brought what we call frontier democracy, which actually came right out of the Scottish Kirk.
07:28Donald Trump may not be aware of the seventh president's roots in Ulster.
07:37But it's no coincidence that a portrait of the original populist president, Andrew Jackson,
07:43now hangs on the wall of the Oval Office.
07:46Few Americans are aware of the part the Scots-Irish have played in their nation's politics.
08:01But at a time when the future of the colonies was at stake,
08:04when British rule was overthrown and the new republic created,
08:08people from Ulster incited revolution, fought for independence,
08:13and influenced the very foundations of American democracy.
08:18Well, the Scots-Irish, of course, are one of the most important and impactful 18th century migration groups.
08:28And the term that we use for them varies.
08:33Sometimes Scots-Irish, Scots-Irish, Ulster Scots, Irish, Irish Presbyterians.
08:40And you're talking now about a movement of people that's massive by early modern standards.
08:47So, outside of, of course, the number of people who have been leaving Africa
08:52and heading in chains over to the New World,
08:54when it comes to the 18th century, anyway, the Irish leaving
08:57are going to probably be the largest non-African group
09:00that's going to be sailing to what will be the American colonies.
09:03Ulster Scots' migration to America began in the 1600s,
09:10but in the summer of 1718, more than 19 ships arrived in the port of Boston.
09:16Those on board were mainly Presbyterians,
09:22Ulster Scots' farming families who had suffered religious discrimination
09:26and economic hardship, pursuing their dream of a better life in the New World.
09:36As they say in mystery dramas, means, motive and opportunity.
09:41There was a way for people to leave,
09:43and given the exigencies of life in Ulster,
09:46the economic opportunities in the Americas, they took it.
09:51That economic opportunity being that all-important four-letter word, land.
10:03Land ownership was a means to independence.
10:10Not having to be subservient to a landlord.
10:14Being able to stand on their own and to bequeath something to their children.
10:20But there was a price to pay.
10:27While there was plenty of cheap land, it was on the frontier,
10:31the disputed hinterland between European settlement and Native American homelands.
10:37It was remote and often dangerous.
10:41And those who settled there had to be strong, resilient and self-reliant.
10:47They would look to live near one another for emotional support, economic support, and for spiritual support.
11:02It's been said that one can trace the movement of these newcomers from the north of Ireland by plotting the location of Presbyterian churches.
11:17It was part of their sense of community.
11:21They sought out people to whom they were related or people they knew back in Antrim or Down or Dundakalm.
11:36We know quite a bit about the communities that the Scotch-Irish created, often on emerging and ever westward-moving frontiers.
11:50But beginning with central Pennsylvania, around Donegal Springs, or as migration pushed westward in Pennsylvania toward the time of the American Revolution,
12:00many of the Scotch-Irish took advantage of initiatives created by the governments of colonies like Virginia and the Carolinas by offering land at very attractive prices.
12:12So they made a left turn, and they went south, and they went up the Shenandoah Valley.
12:17They'd have neighbors of other ethnic groups.
12:21Often an Irish family had a German neighbor.
12:25Over time, the Irish tended to marry each other, and the Germans tended to marry each other.
12:32So their ethnic identity was maintained over two, three generations.
12:42Anne McClung farms in a part of Virginia once known as the Irish Tract,
12:48after the Ulster immigrants who settled here over 250 years ago.
12:54It was first owned by MacGuffins, and then Kirkpatrick's, and then the McClung's.
13:01They came down what they call the Great Wagon Road, and many of them, and particularly the McClung's,
13:11stopped in the Timber Ridge area, which is just north of Lexington.
13:16Anne has a particular interest in the history of the log cabins built by those early settlers.
13:26The cabins are all, I just think they're beautiful. They're all different.
13:35The Scotch-Irish had very few building skills when they came here,
13:38and when they first were in the Philadelphia area, that's where they learned what they learned.
13:47They learned from the Swedes and the Germans how to put log houses together.
13:51And then they sort of developed their own techniques, so each log cabin is different.
13:57The logs are notched differently. Different types of logs are used.
14:04Some of them are just one room, one story. Some of them have chimneys in the center,
14:09which would be a German influence. Some of them have chimneys on either end of the cabin,
14:15which would be more of this Swedish influence.
14:22The original settlers and their families, who have stayed here for generations,
14:26are truly tied to this land, and all of them have that farming blood in them.
14:34It took guts, I'm sure. They seem to have this determination, from what I've read,
14:41and the families worked together. Even though they weren't close together,
14:46each family was pretty well isolated. They helped each other.
14:50They could put up a log structure in a day with other people helping
14:55and raising barns the same way.
15:03I think the Scotch-Irish are totally responsible for settling our area,
15:07for giving us Lexington, our county seat,
15:12for establishing the churches and the schools,
15:15and without them, we wouldn't be here. We would have nothing.
15:25By the 1770s, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian communities
15:29were thriving throughout the colonies,
15:32and they and the churches and schools they founded
15:34were to play a significant role in the movement
15:37towards American independence from Britain.
15:52As their numbers increased, so did the need for ministers.
15:55Many who answered that call came from the north of Ireland.
16:11Among them was Frances Allison, who was very influential in training
16:15not just ministers for the Presbyterian ministry,
16:18but also men who would become leaders in the revolution.
16:22The son of a weaver from Donegal,
16:29Frances Allison instilled in his students a Presbyterian world view
16:34in which all men were created equal,
16:39with a history of dissent dating back to the Scottish Reformation of the 1500s.
16:44He was also teaching the radical moral philosophy of another Ulster Presbyterian minister,
16:55and leader of the Scottish Enlightenment, Frances Hutcheson.
16:59His ideas would change the way we view the world.
17:04Frances Hutcheson is emblematic of a broader shift in understanding about what a human person is.
17:09And this broader shift was also something that transfixed the so-called founding fathers at the time of the American Revolution.
17:23He comes up with the idea of the common sense of the moral sense, and that is we almost have a sixth sense, as opposed to the five senses.
17:37And this sixth sense is one that allows us to appreciate others and makes us altruistic,
17:42as opposed to just kind of greedy and individualistic in lots of ways.
17:45Now, to our ears, this doesn't sound too radical.
17:51But when you talk about the 17th or 18th century, this is sort of an earth-shattering idea.
17:58Hutcheson had created a new political and social vision in which all human beings were born free and equal,
18:06and had as its goal liberty and happiness for all.
18:10This was at the heart of Frances Allison's teaching, and the inspiration for Americans about to cut their ties with Britain.
18:23How and why do we break away from this? Do we turn our back on this?
18:28Surely there has to be some well-thought-out path to separation.
18:33The ideas of Allison, Allison who's mediating Francis Hutcheson, help provide direction.
18:46If Francis Allison and Francis Hutcheson provided a blueprint for colonial leaders seeking independence,
18:53another Ulster Presbyterian would play a crucial role in sowing the seeds of revolutionary thought among the ordinary people.
19:01We had another movement with William Tennant and his son Gilbert Tennant.
19:10William Tennant started what his detractors snubbingly called the Log College,
19:15which was an academy in the Scottish version to train young men for ministry,
19:20about 18 of whom would become leaders in what we call the Great Awakening.
19:23How you doing? You doing that better?
19:25Among them was his son Gilbert Tennant, who became one of the most famous preachers in the Americas.
19:34The Great Awakening was an emphasis away from intellectual learning, as Francis Allison promoted,
19:43towards a more emotional connection with your faith.
19:47So there was this belief that conversion came from an emotional experience and began with the heart instead of with the mind.
20:01The young people and those people on the margins are the ones who are kind of transfixed with this new religiosity.
20:07And these were the people who flocked to hear people like Gilbert Tennant preach.
20:16He's saying, come and follow me. I don't care what you did, I'm going to tell you what you're going to do.
20:20Imagine a preacher coming to town. You've heard his name. You've perhaps read his sermons in pamphlet series.
20:31And he comes to town. He can't preach in a church because he's not welcome in the church.
20:37So he finds the square outside the church or the town square somewhere else to set up.
20:41But if this church is going to be built, and if we're going to win this county and win this city, it is not going to be by me, it's going to be by you.
20:52Crowds gathered to hear these sermons, which would be 40 minutes an hour or two hours long.
20:58They told stories that connected where people were in their lives.
21:02And there was excitement, a carnival atmosphere.
21:13Gilbert Tennant was not only preaching revival to the masses.
21:17He was telling them that only men who'd experienced their own spiritual conversion should be ministers.
21:23When we hear these things, we don't think much of it. But in the 18th century, this is dynamite to be able to say something like that.
21:36This is such an explosive kind of concept because it's telling people that individually they can determine things on their own.
21:44So it's ironic. So if you will, kind of the first sort of youth rebellion is based upon religion.
21:48This religious revolution would have profound political consequences.
22:05Americans are going to take the old skins of religious revival and fill them, if you will, with the new wine of liberty.
22:11But the idea of kind of standing up for yourself, this is something that would have resonated with them in many ways.
22:27Both the emotionalism of evangelical Protestantism preached by Gilbert Tennant,
22:31and the reasoned ideals associated with Francis Hutcheson and the Enlightenment played important roles in the American Revolution.
22:44But it was economic and political grievances that would ignite the revolutionary fire.
22:49I don't think that the revolution itself was inevitable. There was absolutely a reckoning that had to happen.
23:00The colonies were getting larger. They were getting fuller of their own self-importance.
23:05They really viewed themselves as sort of adult, mature societies.
23:10And Great Britain really didn't. And so there was going to be some conflict there.
23:13That conflict began when the British Crown imposed a series of taxes on the colonies in order to recoup the money it had spent fighting a war against France.
23:28Each new tax on sugar, tea, glass and paper fueled resentment in America,
23:35so that for the first time the colonies came together to act as one in protest.
23:40The Continental Congress was the effort by the political leaders to really harness the excitement of the revolution,
23:47and the possibility of resistance, and come up with one unified body that would be able to speak for all 13 states.
23:57They came together in Philadelphia in 1774,
24:02and the purpose was really to build ties between these delegates.
24:06The states didn't have all that much in common.
24:09They had different religions and ethnicities and government structures, and they didn't have any reason to trust one another.
24:22They were embarking on this enormous adventure of requesting reform from the king and potentially going farther.
24:31Community leaders across the colonies were also considering their position.
24:45In 1775, a full year before the Declaration of Independence,
24:49the Scotch-Irish Covenanters of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina published the Mecklenburg Resolves.
24:59When word comes from the Continental Congress that local communities are to organize local committees that will functionally oversee the political life of these communities,
25:10in the midst of this rebellion, in the midst of this rebellion, whatever this rebellion is going to be and wherever it's going,
25:16the residents of Charlotte take this quite a bit further than everyone else is ready to go.
25:20They gather and declare the laws of the British Empire null and void in the backcountry,
25:26and proclaim their allegiance to the provincial government in the coast,
25:30and then by default to Philadelphia where the Continental Congress is.
25:34They do that, though, because they come into that room with a lot of cultural baggage that has been remarkably durable.
25:42They believe their forefathers, dating back to 1638 in the Scottish National Covenant,
25:49in 1643 in the Solemn-Legon Covenant, their ancestors who fought at Derry and Annaskillin,
25:53they bring with them the assumption that our families have done this type of thing before.
26:01We are used to resisting the tyranny of the Crown against our personal liberty and our religious liberty,
26:06and here we are in our generation to do it yet again.
26:09So from their perspective it makes perfect sense to say the British Crown has yet again voided its authority over us,
26:15and we will create a new authority.
26:16Yet politicians in Philadelphia were wary of Ulster Presbyterians,
26:23particularly the Covenanters of the Carolina backcountry.
26:29When you talk about Presbyterians in the 18th century,
26:34especially when you talk about Presbyterians in the backcountry,
26:37most people in polite circles would have rolled their eyes and known what you meant.
26:41What you really mean is a certain type of political radical who has a fierce independence,
26:48a rather rugged localism,
26:51and is carrying with them the political heritage of the Covenanting tradition
26:57that dates back well over 150 years at this point.
27:01They're very likely to be rebellious.
27:03They're very likely to find everyone to be acting in a tyrannical way towards them,
27:11and they're very likely to fight back when they see it.
27:15The Mecklenburg Resolves in May of 1775 do call for the area militias to pick up arms
27:22and be ready for what's likely to be a military conflict.
27:26But that's one community, and they don't speak for all the backcountry communities.
27:29What's hard to tell from Philadelphia or Newbern is not whether or not backcountry Presbyterian communities
27:36are going to rise up in arms against tyranny.
27:38It's who are they going to say is being tyrannical.
27:43The Continental Congress enlisted the help of influential Scotch-Irish minister David Caldwell.
27:49Caldwell puts together a sermon titled The Character and Doom of the Sluggard,
28:00taken from a verse in Proverbs that says those who aren't willing to stand up for themselves
28:05are bound to pay tribute to foreign leaders.
28:08It's that sermon, both as Caldwell preaches it at multiple locations,
28:12and in print that becomes wildly popular, to motivate many backcountry communities
28:19to en masse support the rebellion.
28:21The influence of the Scotch-Irish in the fight for American independence was far-reaching.
28:27In Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Scotch-Irish communities drew up their own statements of dissent against the Crown.
28:34Philadelphia, America's largest city in 1776, was run by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.
28:44During the American Revolution, a revolution occurred within Pennsylvania.
28:51As Irish Presbyterians in coalition with German reformed, two groups, two prominent groups in the province
28:59who had been shut out of power actually took power.
29:02and maintained power by shutting out their opponents.
29:09Those Quakers and those Anglicans who were suspected of being, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about the revolution,
29:22were denied the right to be part of the polity.
29:26So now, the Scotch-Irish are in control of the government in Philadelphia, they run the state.
29:38With pro-rebellion Scotch-Irish in power in Pennsylvania, the way was clear for all the colonies to agree to a Declaration of Independence from Britain.
29:48The Declaration of Independence takes place in the summer of 1776, and the purpose is really to list the grievances that the states had against King George III and against Parliament.
30:04And explain why they were taking these big, drastic steps, explain why they were going to war.
30:15Three of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were born in Ulster.
30:19Several of the signatories had been students of Ulster Presbyterian Minister Francis Allison.
30:32Among them was the Secretary of the Continental Congress and a leader of the revolutionary movement, Charles Thompson from County Londonderry.
30:40In signing their names on the document, they were pledging to each other, they were pledging to their families and their communities that they were committed to this path.
30:54And were willing to risk everything, their lives, their land, their families, in pursuit of this new goal.
31:02If Francis Allison influenced men who signed the Declaration of Independence, some of the key ideas enshrined within it can be traced to the Scottish Enlightenment and Francis Hutcheson.
31:19Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, those words have transfixed people since they were written in 1776.
31:26Many would say that it has a lot to do with Scottish Enlightenment ideas about what makes a person a person and about the Scottish moral sense.
31:37That all people are inclined to sociability, all people are inclined to make links with one another and all people can essentially be good.
31:46It's this great kind of vision of hope, if you will, that the Declaration of Independence is premised upon and also owes a great deal to the Scottish Enlightenment.
31:54Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those inalienable rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence, are as important to Americans today as the day they were written.
32:12People will move for more freedom, or less taxes, or to be with people that share the same viewpoint that they share, whatever the case is.
32:24A lot of the Scott Irish tended to move into the wilderness and were more adventurous than some of the other people that came over.
32:38I think that spirit of independence is still in a lot of us younger ones, even though we don't really realize where it came from.
32:52I think it makes us a lot more independent as far as our views of government, and we want less government intrusion and be independent as much as we possibly can.
33:06And I think that's a big reason why we came over here in the first place.
33:18Billy Walker grew up in an area of the Blue Ridge Mountains settled by immigrants from Ulster.
33:24This little bit of water here is called Chestnut Run Branch, and Chestnut Mountain is back up here.
33:36And Granddaddy used to live up on the side of the mountain. He was born back there.
33:40It used to be an old school, and he went here until he was 12 years old.
33:44And actually, a lot of what you see here, a lot of these trees, of course, they're all under 100 years old.
33:52But at one time, these mountains were cleared off, and there were tomato plantations back here, and apple orchards.
34:00And they had their own brand, and I mean, it was a whole lot more than what people realized.
34:06People coming here, I mean, there was nothing.
34:10When they came back to an area like this, the first thing they had to do was to build some kind of a shelter.
34:16And then the second thing, they would build a church.
34:20And the third thing would be a school.
34:24The Scotch-Irish were very education-oriented.
34:29And all through the mountains, you can find little foundations or whatever.
34:33And I remember seeing more when I was a kid of little schools here and there.
34:38And, you know, they were, like, within walking distance of little small communities.
34:45It was like, oh, you know, ignorant hillbillies live back in the sticks and, you know, can't read or write or anything.
34:51And that's not the case at all.
34:54They were very determined to get an education better themselves.
34:58Change came to these communities in the aftermath of World War I and during the Great Depression of the 1930s,
35:09as the government offered incentives for families to relocate and designated parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains a national park.
35:17I used to hear stories when I was a kid about how the government would come in and load up people on a truck.
35:29And before they had even left the farm, had set the cabin on fire so they could not come back in here.
35:36And now, where all these people used to live in all these little communities, now it's like National Forest.
35:47It was Scotch-Irish communities like these that had done so much to win American independence and safeguard its freedoms.
35:55Well, they had massive influence, but again, we often will look, well, who were the signers of the Declaration of Independence?
36:03Who were going to play those prominent roles?
36:05When we look for those people, we miss, I think, the real story there.
36:08And the real story is, is that almost to a person, so many of these immigrants and the descendants of these immigrants
36:15are going to be on the patriot side at the time of the American Revolution.
36:20So much so that an historian has written that perhaps we should think about the American Revolution as an Irish Revolution in America.
36:33Some say as high as 60% of the Revolutionary War Army were the Scotch-Irish, a good six of my ancestors.
36:42One of the great battles, which is under-reported, let's say, in the Revolutionary War, was the Battle of Kings Mountain.
36:51And I had three direct ancestors fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain.
36:57That battle was the inspiration for Robert Inman's play, Liberty Mountain.
37:03Walter McKenzie, minister of the Presbyterian faith, servant of God and my Scots-Irish flock.
37:12It all is a thread about how the Scots-Irish changed America, and they did.
37:19I think the Scots-Irish saved America.
37:22I honor my father and our proud heritage, but I also feel a strong bond with our new home.
37:29It is the place of my future where I will someday marry and raise my own family, free and independent.
37:36I am, sir, a Scots-Irish American.
37:40It was primarily Scots-Irish who fought at the Battle of Kings Mountain,
37:44started by the over-mountain men who lived in what was then Western North Carolina across the Blue Ridge Mountains.
37:51And they were the ones who organized the patriot force that defeated the loyalists at Kings Mountain.
38:00And it turned the tide of the war.
38:08The British were winning up to then, especially in the south.
38:12They had captured Charleston, subdued South Carolina.
38:15They had captured Charlotte, North Carolina, and preparing to move north.
38:22Leading the British forces as they moved north through the Carolinas was Scotsman Colonel Patrick Ferguson.
38:30Ferguson sent a letter to the leaders of the over-mountain men.
38:35And he said, if you do not lay down your arms and pledge allegiance to the king,
38:40I will march my army over the mountains, hang your leaders, and lay waste to your country with fire and sword.
38:47Well, you just don't threaten those Scots-Irish Presbyterians living over there in Appalachia.
38:53That was the trigger, and they sent out the word to organize militia units to join them.
39:05And then they marched.
39:10The over-mountain men were not trained militia.
39:14They were Indian fighters.
39:15They had learned the tactics of battle fighting Indians.
39:18Gathering men as they went, the militia marched across the mountains, and on the 7th of October 1780,
39:26they found Ferguson and his men camped at the top of Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
39:33They took Ferguson by surprise.
39:35They attacked up the mountain.
39:37Ferguson's men on top were trained in standard British battlefield tactics,
39:45where you march in big rows of men in ranks, firing massive volleys, and then charged with bayonets.
39:53But this was a wooded mountainside, and their fire went over the heads of the Patriots.
40:00The Patriots had long rifles, which were extremely accurate, and they could hide in the underbrush,
40:10and behind the trees and rocks, and pick off these Loyalists one by one up on the crest.
40:16It took only an hour.
40:20It was savage, hand-to-hand combat.
40:23Almost 200 of the Loyalists were killed, only 28 of the Patriots.
40:31The Patriot force dispersed.
40:35Most of them went back to their homes and families, and that's why they fought.
40:39They were fighting not for some ideal of the America of the future,
40:47but they were fighting for their land, their homes, their families, their neighbors, their friends.
40:54And I think that's why they were successful.
40:57They were driven by the need to protect what they had achieved in America.
41:03It was an improbable event, but just imagine what history would have been like
41:11had the Patriots not won and won decisively at King's Mountain.
41:16As I like to tell audiences in the U.S., if it weren't for King's Mountain,
41:21we would probably all be singing God Save the Queen.
41:26Within a year, the war had been won, and America had gained its independence from Britain.
41:32But what the new United States would look like,
41:36what form of government it would adopt, was far from certain.
41:42The 1780s, as they were figuring out the Constitution
41:45and what was going to happen next, was an incredibly tense time.
41:49There was a new nation, and it was a republic,
41:52and all republics in history had failed prior to this one.
41:58There was this tremendous anxiety that this new nation
42:01was going to fall apart.
42:05And there was a lot of tension about what the new system should look like.
42:09They had just fought a war and revolution to get rid of a monarchy.
42:13They were trying to find a middle ground that gave enough executive power
42:22and enough federal power to the government to give them security
42:26and give them sort of a strong international voice in diplomacy
42:30and to be able to raise money so that the nation had credit,
42:33but to also reserve powers to the states and to reserve rights for individuals.
42:43The Constitution was devised by men sitting in a hall in Philadelphia in August
42:52with the doors closed and the windows closed because they were meeting in secret.
42:59They had no mandate to create an entirely new frame of government, and yet they did.
43:04And when this was presented to the Pennsylvania legislature,
43:08the reaction from those from the back country, mostly of Ulster origin, was extremely negative.
43:20Here's what was missing from the Constitution.
43:26The portion of the Constitution that Americans hold dear is particularly the Bill of Rights.
43:36There was no Bill of Rights.
43:43When asked about a Bill of Rights, the framers of the Constitution said,
43:47you don't need that, trust us, you'll be fine.
43:50But the Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, led by John Smiley, Robert Whitehill and William Finlay,
44:01were among those who insisted that if there was to be a Constitution,
44:05then it had to include the people's rights to liberty of conscience,
44:10freedom of speech, trial by jury, and the right to bear arms.
44:20William Finlay said, I can think of no better device to create an aristocracy than this Constitution.
44:35Finlay and Smiley and Whitehill were speaking from their experience,
44:39both in the back country and the frontier of Pennsylvania,
44:43but also, in the case of Finlay and Smiley, of having grown up in Ulster.
44:50They saw their fathers paying rent to landlords.
44:55They saw their families suffering to come up with the wherewithal
45:00to pay tithes to the Church of Ireland.
45:06They did not want to see an aristocracy and an established church in the United States.
45:13That's why they were so insistent on a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
45:20Once the Bill of Rights had been agreed, the Constitution was finally ratified in June 1788.
45:34But within three years, the Federal Government faced the first major challenge to its authority.
45:41And it came from the Scotch-Irish communities of Western Pennsylvania.
45:45In order to reduce the national debt and pay back bondholders who'd financed the Revolutionary War,
45:55Congress passed an excise tax on whiskey.
45:58To the well-to-do in Philadelphia, this made perfect sense.
46:07Whiskey's being produced, let the producers of whiskey pay the tax.
46:11Well, from the perspective of Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky and the hills of the Carolinas,
46:17there are a few very serious problems with this.
46:28While there were a few commercial whiskey producers,
46:31in the Scotch-Irish communities of the back country,
46:34distilling was a part-time occupation and part of the culture.
46:38Whiskey was something that people routinely had breakfast, lunch and dinner.
46:50No social gathering was complete without passing the jug around.
46:55Whiskey was an integral part of daily life.
47:05And so to have this tax imposed on a people who couldn't pay was a terrible front.
47:13And it seemed very wrong.
47:18When revenue officials tried to collect the tax,
47:20they were met first with passive resistance and then physical attack.
47:27Things came to a head in 1794,
47:30when Federal troops put down an insurrection led by County Tyrone man James McFarlane.
47:38It was the threat of more military action, led by the President George Washington,
47:43that finally ended the rebellion.
47:51But it didn't end whiskey-making.
47:54Chris Prilliman grew up in an area famed for making moonshine.
48:02A lot of these old folks in these mountains, you know,
48:04I mean, it just wasn't where they could go out and see the world,
48:07so they had to find their entertainment right in there amongst where they was at, you know.
48:14A lot of them was bootleggers and stuff,
48:15and they'd have corn shuckings,
48:18and I've heard them talk about back in the old days,
48:20they'd take and pull all the furniture to the walls of the house, you know,
48:25and then they'd have a square dance in the house.
48:29That's one thing that got me so interested in the liquor business.
48:32When I was little, all them people that I respected,
48:35they had their little business on the side,
48:36and it was little sneaky doings, you know,
48:38and they'd always have to sneak around the corn and get them a little drink.
48:41They'd have our selected stuff, you know,
48:43whether it be some good corn liquor or brandy,
48:46but they'd go around the building and share a drink with somebody that was trusted, you know.
48:53I just got fascinated by that way of life when I was just a little bitty,
48:56because there was a lot of people into it that I looked up to,
48:59and that's how I wound up wanting to play music,
49:02and wound up fooling Flucka, too.
49:03The Ulster Scots' migration to America continued through the 18th and into the 19th century,
49:25as settlers and their descendants pushed west across the continent.
49:36They continued to influence what was still a fledgling democracy.
49:44But there was one man in particular who arguably did more to shape the modern American presidency than any other.
49:51Andrew Jackson had been born within months of his parents arriving in America from Carrickfergus.
50:01His upbringing in the Carolina backcountry was typical of many Ulster immigrants.
50:07But the life he went on to lead was very different to his Scotch-Irish compatriots.
50:12Jackson becomes, in essence, the greatest success story of the Scotch-Irish experience in its post-revolutionary years,
50:23despite the fact that he's actually not that representative of most Scotch-Irish backcountry people.
50:31He becomes a merchant, he becomes a large farmer and a slaveholder,
50:35and is wildly successful in all these things.
50:37Most Scotch-Irish Presbyterians did not have those paths to wealth that they could or did take quite so easily.
50:48They tend to be much smaller farmers.
50:50But in Jackson, they see themselves, and they see someone who carries along their heritage,
50:54and he becomes a kind of political hero in many ways,
50:58a caricature of what every Scotch-Irish in the backcountry wishes they could themselves become.
51:02Andrew Jackson became president in 1828 after a bitter, nasty campaign.
51:13The Washington establishment hated him,
51:17but he won the election on a wave of support for his populist policies
51:22and image as a man of the people.
51:27Jackson's a complicated legacy,
51:28because he is the Janus-faced aspect of the Scotch-Irish experience.
51:35Proudly independent, adventurous, willing to carve out of very rough territory, vibrant and successful communities,
51:43and at the same time doing that on the backs of clearing out other people from those communities,
51:47and very quickly accepting that to do this most effectively,
51:51the way we will do it is to own other people whose skin looks different than ours.
51:54Jackson created the presidency as we know it today.
52:01He founded the Democratic Party,
52:04and he took on the banks and political establishment.
52:11But more recently, it's for his role as a slave owner,
52:15and for the forced removal of Native Americans from their land
52:18to make way for white farmers, that he has been remembered.
52:23Andrew Jackson is really getting a bad rap these days.
52:27You know, he was a remarkable president.
52:33He brought to this country the notion that you take care of the people at the bottom,
52:40and they will do great things.
52:41That was frontier-style democracy.
52:48And people were, you know, very threatened by the fact that he became president,
52:54but he changed the face of American politics.
52:59You know, was he perfect? Was anybody perfect?
53:03Can we all be judged during the time we live, you know, 200 years from now?
53:07But he was a great president.
53:12And it is Andrew Jackson's anti-establishment populist persona
53:17that appeals to Donald Trump.
53:19It was during the revolution that Jackson first confronted
53:23and defied an arrogant elite.
53:27Does that sound familiar to you?
53:30I wonder why they keep talking about Trump and Jackson, Jackson and Trump.
53:35Oh, I know the feeling, Andrew.
53:40If you look at, you know, Donald Trump's election in 2016,
53:45and people wonder, you know, how he came to areas like this
53:48and sold, you know, the way he did.
53:51I mean, you can go back to Andy Jackson, you know, for that.
53:55And, of course, Andy Jackson was the first people's president,
53:57and his populism, you know, led in the formation of the modern Democratic Party.
54:04And it's a cultural thing. We're populist.
54:08We believe in the people. We believe that the democracy is threatened,
54:14you know, when we don't have social justice and economic fairness for all people.
54:18He didn't want government corruption.
54:22He expanded benefits for veterans.
54:25He battled the centralized financial power that brought influence
54:29at our citizens' expense.
54:31He imposed tariffs on foreign countries to protect American workers.
54:36That sounds very familiar.
54:38Wait till you see what's going to be happening pretty soon, folks.
54:40I think if anybody wants to emulate Andrew Jackson, there's not a bad thing in it.
54:59There have been more than a dozen American presidents with Ulster Scott's roots.
55:02But only Andrew Jackson had an era named after him.
55:21For many people, the ideals of Jacksonian democracy,
55:25social justice, economic fairness and individual liberty,
55:28were central to the presidential election of 2016.
55:39I think what 2016 showed was that the white Southern vote had a cultural footprint,
55:47that this was a Scots-Irish footprint.
55:49Going ahead, we'll find out whether that identity plays out in 2018 and more so in 2020.
55:58There's no doubt that many of those voters courted by politicians in the 2016 presidential election
56:08identify as Scotch-Irish.
56:14But the descendants of immigrants from Ulster are to be found in every part of the United States
56:19and right across the political and social spectrum.
56:22Who they are, the part they played in America's history, is often lost in the founding myths of America.
56:33But the Ulster Scots were critical to the success of the War of Independence.
56:39They helped secure the individual freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights.
56:43And they played a significant part in shaping the democracy of the New Republic,
56:50and the cultural and spiritual life of the United States.
56:55The Presbyterian Church today in the United States is only about a million members.
57:01So our influence has diminished.
57:09But our ideas and our values have informed the culture of the United States in many ways.
57:16One, education, because we started so many schools and put so much value in education,
57:21and particularly in public education.
57:27Also important is this idea of the corruptibility of power.
57:31The tendency to be suspicious of those in power, I think,
57:34is related to those beliefs that the Presbyterians brought over.
57:38That continues to this day.
57:39Part of the legacy is the way in which Scotch-Irishness plays out in the current population,
57:54and the large numbers of people who do identify themselves as Scotch-Irish.
58:00It's the dominant culture in blue-collar America, the culture, not necessarily just the ethnic group itself.
58:11Bottom up.
58:15Everything about the Scotch-Irish coming out of the Scottish Kirk,
58:19I'm your equal.
58:21You may make more money, you may be my commanding officer.
58:24In human terms, I'm your equal.
58:26That's the basis of the Scotch-Irish culture.
58:28The devil's gotta get paid when the man comes down your way.
58:31When the man comes down your way,
58:40The devil's gotta get paid when the man comes down your way.
58:48The man comes down your way,
58:53The devil's gotta get paid
58:56When the man comes down for work
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