The Clearances

[macwilkin]

Pages 150 to 154 of Meyer's book, The Highland Scots of North Carolina 1732- 1776, describes 3 reasons, at least for North Carolina Scots: 1. some Highlanders (Campbells) had it as it as "part of their tradition to defend the HOuse of Hanover." 2. "The fear of reprisal was probably a second factor....No group of people in the empire was any better acquainted with the painful aftermath of an unsuccessful revolution than the Highlanders....Even though Highlanders who were too young to remember the Forty-five had heard many stories of the brutalities, atrocities and destruction inflicted by the British Army under the Duke of Cumberland." 3. [The NC governor's policy of land grants] " must have been a third factor in influencing some of the Highlanders....the pressure of population and the changes in the agricultural system of the Highlands forced many people from the land. Thus the Highlanders land hunger is understandable."

Loyalties are often divided. I had ancestors who fought on both sides during the Revolution and the Civil War. And similar conflicts of interest can cause history to be interpreted different ways.

I guess history is like memory: selective and not altogether rooted in the facts.

Sir,

Many thanks for the specific passages from Meyer. My copy is at home on the shelf, so I wasn't able to quote directly from it.

Meyer's point about the collective memory of the '45 is spot on; Many Highlanders reasoned that the American Revolution would fail, just as the '45 did, and being on the losing side twice was somewhere they didn't want to be.

Interestingly, Fernec Szaz, in Scots in the North American West writes of anti-Scottish attitudes on the part of the rebels, from Thomas Jefferson's mention of "Scotch mercenaries" in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence*, down to a 1782 resolution passed by the State of Georgia that declared the Scots had a "decided inimicality to the Civil Liberties of America." (pp. 5-6) Flora MacDonald, famed of song and story as the woman who rescued the Bonnie Prince after Culloden, immigrated to North Carolina with her husband, only to return to Scotland after the war.

btw, Dr. Duane Meyer, the author, was a professor at my alma mater. He retired not long after I began my undergraduate work, so I never had the pleasure of taking a class with him.

Regards,

Todd

*native Scot John Witherspoon of New Jersey successfully lobbied TJ to remove this passage from the Declaration.