How the Scots…Continued, part five.

Scots in America

For many reasons, emigration occurs, and it is the emigration of the über-educated culture of people that has impacted the rest of the world in so many ways. Scottish ties to North America date back to the early 1700’s with the (mostly illegal) Glasgow tobacco trade. Ulster Scots and secondly Highlanders were the first and largest two groups to arrive. Prior to the Revolutionary War, 250,000 Ulster Scots moved to the US; second, there are probably more descendants of the Highlanders living in the US than anywhere else in the world. Their influences were profound.

A quick aside, a laundry list of some famous descendants of Scots: Presidents Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk (John Knox, remember was influential during the Scottish Reformation), John C. Calhoun, Patrick Henry, Jim Bowie, Daniel Boone, Andrew Carnegie, Will Clark (of Lewis and Clark), Sam Houston, General Winfield Scott.

Probably the first great contribution to the creation of American culture was in education. It got its start in the religious teachings of William Tennant who started his own college of theology, the “Log College”. Essentially, this would evolve into Presbyterian college in Prince Town, NJ, and finally we have Princeton. This institution would become a vital meeting ground of America’s “evangelical fervour” and Scotland’s modernizing humanism—“a principal conduit for the flow of in Scottish ideas into the culture of the colonies.” Students of Princeton included the like of President James Madison and Vice President Aaron Burr as well as a number of the signers of the Constitution. The Scottish education system and philosophy would influence a great deal when it came to the founding of the US independence. Phrases like “we hold these truths to be self-evident” and “pursuit of happiness” owe their lineage to the Ulster Scots. Incidentally, the final copy of the Constitution was physically written, publicly read aloud, printed, all by Ulster Scots. Finally, on a different political footing, Thomas Paine wrote his Common Sense document based on Scottish Philosopher Thomas Reid’s ideas that “settled truth” could be attained by observation. Reid’s ideas would shape American theories of education for the next 100 years.