Born Fighting- How the Scots Irish shaped America review

[Lallans]

James Webb is a former US Marine and Secretary of the Navy, and a present Senator of the United States (D). He has authored works of fiction but Born Fighting (2005)) is a personalized history of those he regards as his people: the Protestant Irish, largely of Lowland Scots descent, who arrived in America in the centuries before the better-known Irish emigrations of the potato famines.

Drawing on the works of professional historians, Webb traces the history of the Scots Irish peoples back to region between Scotland and England known as the Border Marches, their violent history there in the several centuries during which those countries were at odds, and then their subsequent first emigration to the Irish province of Ulster after England and Scotland united. Once in Ulster, Webb relates how the Scots Protestants, who were largely dissenters from the 'established' Church of England, were exploited and persecuted, leading to their enormous mass emigration to American, largely in the early part of the 18th century and before the American Revolution. Once in America, the Scots Irish became, first through official policy and then through their own inclination, the people of the American Frontier and they were on the cutting edge of westward expansion right up to the 20th century.

Webb shows the huge but little-known impact those same Scots Irish (as they came to be called in America) had on American life and on the history of the USA, and particularly how their hard-earned hostility to the British played a large role in the American victory after 1776. Almost unique to this book, Webb goes on to discuss how the Scots Irish culture lived on to shape the new nation right down to the present time- most historians have them disappearing into the melting pot after the Revolution but that is far from the case.

Senator Webb's view of the Scots Irish is filtered through his perspective as a retired soldier (hence the book's title), and his particular emphasis is on the conflicts that shaped them for fighting. Webb particularly dwells on how the Scots Irish continued to fight in America's battles long after they arrived in North America. He often uses his own family as a typical example. He spends scant time on even very prominent Scots Irish cultural figures such as Mark Twain.

Not everyone agrees with Webb's emphasis or conclusions, but most readers will agree that this book is a compelling work for anyone interested in the subject. It has opened the eyes of many Scot Irish descendants.