by James Webb
Well, not exactly rejoice, but certainly endure. Granny could make do with almost nothing. She could grow almost anything out of the ground. She could break a Lucky Strike cigarette in two when she stepped off a bus, knowing just how many drags she could take between the bus and home. The buses. I have to laugh. She was seventy-five years old when I finished the Naval Academy, and my father had paid to fly her from California to see me graduate. It was her first airplane ride. She told my dad that she liked it okay, but when it came time for her to go back she took the bus—three thousand miles. She liked bourbon better. The second night my dad poured her a shot, she declined, telling him that she couldn’t drink it anymore because it made her feel too good.
It is not enough to say that I loved my grandmother. She lived with us from the time I was two until I was eight. My father, at that time an air force pilot, was gone for three of those years, to Alaska and then to England and then Germany, where he flew in the Berlin Airlift, and after that to remote bases where there was no family housing. At night during those long years, I would sleep with a picture of him standing at attention on a flight line next to one of his aircraft. For a little boy there could have been no nobler hero to look up to, no greater man in the entire world to honor and to miss, and I still keep that picture in my office today. When he was deployed, my grandmother helped fill the void, but she did much more. From the time I was old enough to listen, every night before I went to sleep she made our family history come alive. Many of the tales she told to me and my siblings had been passed down through the generations, mother and father to daughter and son. As a very young boy I came to know Revolutionary War soldiers, dead Confederates, quietly determined great-grandfathers who cut down trees and laid cordwood roads across swamps to bring horse-drawn wagons from Tennessee into the dark heart of Arkansas, and a mysteriously stubborn grandfather whose harshest phrase was “Dad blame it, Pete,” a man crippled by a busted hip who would rather have died poor on his feet than live rich on his knees. And he had done just that.
Nor was old Birch Hodges alone in that respect. My father used to claim, with the disregard of one who had not been born there, that Arkansas had been settled by dreamers and thieves, and that over time the thieves had edged the dreamers out. In the decades following World War II, Arkansas became known for the vastly profitable Wal-Mart chain, the Tyson Foods conglomerate, and the Stephens brokerage, reputed to be the largest securities firm outside of Wall Street. Trickle-down theories haven’t exactly taken hold, however, as the state has retained its reputation as something of a banana republic. Arkansas gives us scads of singers and actors, more than its share of athletes, good soldiers, and every now and then a notable but usually roguish politician. But its educational system has always been near rock bottom. Its crime rate, particularly in Pulaski County, home of Little Rock, has always hovered near the top. And in places like Kensett, nothing goes on, good or bad, that’s much different from what was happening when my grandfather was still alive.
My great-aunt Lena lies in a pauper’s grave at the outside edge of the cemetery. I remind myself that someday I must buy her a marker. She was a hard-living, highly intelligent woman who married late to an older widower, died childless, and suffered the ignominy of having her possessions gone through by strangers when she passed away at the age of ninety-two before family members could make the trip to Kensett and claim them. Standing at her unmarked grave, I remember sitting in the starkness of her living room in 1975 after I finished law school, under her quiet, almost accusing stare, and her finally breaking the silence by saying, simply, “So you’ve been to law school. Did they teach you how to lie yet?”
Another memory, or rather a passed-down recollection, haunts me as I contemplate the simple sack below the earth that holds the departed Lena’s bones. For if I close my eyes and think my way into the misty fields and the distant past, I know that somewhere out there I might see an old truck rumbling into the dead of night, occupied by two hard women along with a little girl whose lame daddy had just walked into the house and died, heading out into the tree lines of some swampy absentee farm to cut and rick dead wood and haul it back to town and hamlet, and so to survive. It was Lena who managed to arrange for the truck that she and her sister and my mother used while the rest of Kensett and nearby Searcy slept, in order to deliver wood for cook stoves and fireplaces to front porches by dawn. Family rumor puts a name on it, but respect for the dead causes me to leave it to the imagination as to what Lena had to trade in order to procure the use of the truck. Lena got things done. Suffice it to say that those were hard and bitter times, and if it were not for Lena they would have been harder and more miserable still.
Not that Lena came away unscarred. She herself told me of the morning of her conversion, when she walked into the back door of a packed Baptist church, stood in the aisle with the entire congregation watching her, and threw her hands into the air and admitted, “I declare, I’m a sinner before God!” And her growing more fervent with old age, refusing to let me inside her house after I began working for a Republican congressman in 1977, standing instead in her front yard dressed only in a bathrobe in the cool April morning air, pointing a finger at me as she shouted, “How can you do this? Did you notice Jesus and Jimmy Carter both have the same initials? Every time I look at our president on TV, I see the blood of Jesus Christ, dripping off the cross onto his back!”
I loved my great-aunt Lena, although it wasn’t always easy to do that. And I’ve got to get a marker for her grave.
I thirsted to hear these kin-people talk. I could sit entranced through magic hours in the stark kitchens and quiet, dusky living rooms of those who were willing to reach back like those ancient tribal elders and help me understand that my life is in some sense a continuum that began before I was born, and will carry me with it long after I am gone. Their revelations came in dribbles, sometimes coaxed and at others dropped casually into a conversation like a sly but knowing confession. The tough, enduring men and women who went through this cauldron did not speak openly or even willingly with each other about the bad times when I was growing up. It seems an unspoken axiom that people who have really had it hard are the last ones to sit around and reminisce about how hard they really had it. In fact, I know there are some who will not be happy that I’ve touched on those days here, however lightly. And I have lightly trod, for they did indeed live hard.
There’s much more, the untold stories that have faded into scattered graves on cold and silent lips, the ones that belong to those who are still alive, and the others that I’m not allowed to tell. But just as Big Moccasin Gap defined one end of the trek across a raw continent, so does Kensett bring some of its tangled highways into focus. Two hundred years separate the family journeys at these two remote outposts. In that time a nation like no other evolved and grew. And yet in Big Moccasin Gap and in Kensett, time pretty well stands still.
And what are we left with? On the one hand we live in an America that is always changing. On the other we are looking at a people so individualistic and yet also so embracive that their ethnic history has melded with nearly every segment of our society while the strength of their culture has in so many ways given that same society its unique historical glue.
But to be sure, the Scots-Irish are a people filled with many offshoots and derivatives, with common threads that join them while strong differences obviate any thought of “ethnic purity” or even complete philosophical unity. We are related to those who stayed behind in Scotland and the border areas in the north of present-day England. We count as cousins those who remained in Ulster, not only Protestant but many Catholics as well. We ourselves are those who remained in the rough north of New England and especially along the mountain ridges that stretch from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Alabama; those who settled the backcountry and farmlands of the South, the Ohio Valley, and the Midwest; those who went north to the factories, west to the Rocky Mountains, and farther still to the farmlands and new freedom of the Pacific
Coast. Some continued to marry among themselves, and some did not. Some are wildly prosperous, and some are not. Some remember at least pieces of this journey, and some do not. Some care, and some do not. Some think it matters, and some do not.
Who are we? We are the molten core at the very center of the unbridled, raw, rebellious spirit of America. We helped build this nation, from the bottom up. We face the world on our feet and not on our knees. We were born fighting. And if the cause is right, we will never retreat.
Notes
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PART ONE: RULERS AND REDNECKS
1. U.S. Census figures. In Korea, West Virginia lost 801 combat dead from a population of 2 million. Connecticut, with a slightly larger population, lost 314. New York, with a population of 14.8 million, lost 2,243. In Vietnam, West Virginia lost 732 combat dead from a population of 1.74 million. Connecticut lost 611 from a population of 3.03 million. New York lost 4,120 from a population of 18.2 million.
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2. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Bantam Classic, 2000), p. 35.
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3. Ibid., p. 34.
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4. See James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 179–83; and David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 608–9.
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5. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Penguin, 1989), pp. 354–58.
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6. Ibid., p. 357.
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7. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition,” National Interest (Winter 1999–2000), pp. 5–29.
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8. Ibid., p. 15.
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9. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
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10. Ibid., p. 9.
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11. Ibid., p. 11.
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PART TWO: THE MAKING OF A PEOPLE—AND A NATION
1. The most concise and historically reliable explication of this period can be found in Nora Chadwick, The Celts (New York: Pelican, 1981), pp. 24–63.
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2. Ibid., pp. 38–39.
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3. Ibid., p. 39.
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4. Ibid., p. 53.
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5. Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, The Birth of Britain (New York: Dorset Press, 1990), p. 33.
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6. Chadwick, The Celts, p. 66.
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7. Ibid., p. 43.
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8. See, e.g., John Boyd Brent in www.Scotland.com, at Hadrian’s Wall.
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9. Churchill, Birth of Britain, p. 40.
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10. Cassius Dio, Roman History, bk. 77, chap. 12.
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11. Ibid., chaps. 13 and 14.
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12. Churchill, Birth of Britain, p. 41.
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13. Ibid., pp. 36–37.
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14. Ibid., p. 38.
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15. Ibid., p. 169.
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16. Ibid., p. 174.
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17. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (London: Fontana/Collins, 1981), p. 20.
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18. For general reference see Chadwick, The Celts, pp. 75–76, 89–94; Smout, A History of the Scottish People, pp. 18–21; and J. D. Mackie, A History of Scotland (New York: Dorset Press, 1985), pp. 16–27.
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19. Chadwick, The Celts, p. 76.
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20. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 19.
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21. Ibid., p. 20.
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22. Ibid., p. 22.
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23. Ibid.
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24. Ibid., p. 20.
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25. Mackie, A History of Scotland, p. 41.
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26. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 22.
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27. Ibid., p. 23.
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28. Ibid., p. 24.
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29. Joseph R. Strayer, Western Europe in the Middle Ages (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p. 199.
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30. Mackie, A History of Scotland, p. 63.
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31. Churchill, The Birth of Britain, p. 304.
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32. Ibid., p. 305.
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33. Ibid.
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34. Ibid., p. 308.
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35. Mackie, A History of Scotland, p. 74.
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36. Churchill, The Birth of Britain, p. 313.
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37. Ibid., pp. 314–15.
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38. Mackie, A History of Scotland, p. 76.
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PART THREE: THE ULSTER SCOTS
1. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Penguin Books, 1989), pp. 12–13.
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2. James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (University of North Carolina Press, 1962), p. 85.
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3. Joseph R. Strayer, Western Europe in the Middle Ages (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p. 223.
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4. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 3.
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5. Ibid., p. 35.
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6. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 88.
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7. Ibid.
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8. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 44.
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9. Ibid.
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10. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 88.
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11. See Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 26.
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12. Ibid., p. 60.
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13. Ibid., p. 14.
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14. Walter Harris, Hibernica, or Ancient Tracts Relating to Ireland (Dublin, 1770), quoted in Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, pp. 90–91.
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15. Henry Grey Graham, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 4th ed. (London, 1937), p. 185, quoted in Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 26.
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16. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 624.
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17. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (London: Fontana/Collins, 1981), p. 32.
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18. Ibid.
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19. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 7.
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20. Fischer, Albion’s Seed, p. 624.
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21. See, e.g., Fischer, Albion’s Seed, pp. 626–29; Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, pp. 9–10; and Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 97.
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22. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 97.
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23. Quoted in Fischer, Albion’s Seed, p. 629.
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24. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 33.
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25. Ibid., pp. 38–39.
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26. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 11.
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27. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 36.
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28. Fischer, Albion’s Seed, pp. 628, 660–62.
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29. Mackie, A History of Scotland, p. 140.
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30. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 48.
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31. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, pp. 50–51.
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32. Mackie, A History of Scotland, pp. 141–43.
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33. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, pp. 52–53.
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34. Ibid., p. 53.
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35. Biographical sketch of John Calvin, H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI.
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36. Charles H. Sylvester, ed., Progress of Nations (Hanson-Bellows Co., 1912), vol. 3, p. 457.
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37. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, p. 56.
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38. See Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 2, The New World (New York: Dorset Press, 1990), pp. 104–19.
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39. See Mackie, A History of Scotland, pp. 145–58; Smout, A History of the Scottish People, pp. 56–77; and Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, pp. 54–67.
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40. Mackie, A History of Scotland, pp. 156–57.
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41. Ibid., p. 158.
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42. Smout, A History of Scotland, p. 142.
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43. Churchill, The New World, p. 150.
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44. Ibid., p. 275.
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45. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 84; Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, p. 124.
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46. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 86.
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47. Ibid., p. 87.
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48. Ibid., p. 89.
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