Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:



“I shall pass through this life but once. Any good I can therefore do, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor deflect it, for I shall never pass this way again.”

Etienne de Grellet



Rather than local and non-local news Items, I am going to add an essay I wrote about my Scots-Irish ancestors. I think a great many of us have Scot-Irish blood along with a dab or two of Creek and Cherokee especially those of us that have roots associated with the Appalachians. Here it is:



A Brief History of Rednecks



I have been reading the history of the impact of the Scots-Irish in America and naturally the author went back into the far past to trace them out to present day. By the way it is Scots, not Scotch. Scots are a people and Scotch is a whisky. Anyway, the big movement came right after James I became the King of Great Britain. Previously, he was James VI of Scotland making him the first of the dual crowned kings of Great Britain. It got started when James financed the expedition to the new world led by Captain John Smith. But James real passion was religion. He could not abide Catholics and he began a project to oust the Catholic landowners in Ireland and seize their lands. The Catholic Irish had been in rebellion against England for centuries and James saw this as a way of diluting them. This resulted in many Catholic Irish Earls fleeing the Emerald Isle trying to escape the wrath of the Protestants and Anglicans. To fill this void, it was decided that a “plantation” in Ireland in an area called Ulster would be formed. It consisted of six shires or counties. To fill the void James and company decided to kill two birds with one stone and offered land in Ulster to Protestant Scottish lords with the stipulation that they would bring their Scottish tenants with them. The waspish Scots would fight at the drop of a hat over anything that interfered with their independence or messed with the clans, or their tight-fisted Presbyterian religion. They were a hard-ass bunch, especially the Borderers or those that lived close to the border with England. As you might expect, the disenfranchised Catholic Irish fought like hell to take their lands back to no avail. The Scottish Lords indeed took the offer and brought their Scottish tenants with them. There was a stipulation that the Lords could not employ Irish tenants, they had to import them from England and Scotland and they had to be English speaking Protestants, moreover the landowners were banned from selling land to the Irish. Whatever land that was left over was given to the Protestant Churches of Ireland including any lands previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. James meant to castrate the Catholics in Ireland, ya’ll. This influx put the Protestant Irish in a hard way because they spoke Gaelic while everyone else spoke English. As a result of this turmoil there were civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1630 many Ulster Scots went home because Charles I, the king of England declared that the Church of Ireland had to use the prayer book of the Church of England essentially making it an Anglican church. That would change the way the fiery Scottish Presbyterians practiced their religion. As I have said before, you don’t pull on Superman’s cape or spit into the wind and you don’t fool around with the Scots religion. In 1638 an oath was imposed by King Charles I on the Ulster Scots binding them to never take up arms against England not matter what. I don’t need to tell you what kind of hell was raised after this outrage. By the way, it was King Charles I presumptuousness that cost him his head as will be discussed in a future lesson. In 1641 the Irish Catholics rose up in an armed rebellion and the prime target was the Plantation land owners. Many, many atrocities were committed by the Irish on the Scottish land owners in retribution for them taking Irish lands. In the 1690s a huge immigration of Protestant Scots came over to Ulster during a famine and as a result the Protestant Scots became the majority. The planters are known as the Ulster Scots. The present partition of Ireland with Ireland and Northern Ireland gets it roots from this era. Northern Ireland is occupied by the progeny of British Protestants and wanted to keep a link with England whereas the rest of Ireland are Catholic and want independence. Later on, the Scots being fed up with restrictions on their religion began heading west to America. They primarily landed in Philadelphia. They were not welcomed by the highbred plantation owners on the Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina tidewater and not by the snooty Puritans in the northeast so they headed further west and settled in small clans in the Appalachian mountain chain starting in western Pennsylvania and then south and west down the chain into Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. They were encouraged in this endeavor because of their warlike nature they would be a good match for the savage Shawnee and Cherokees, and a good match they were. There is a legend in my family on my father’s side that one of my great-great uncles owned a huge chunk of land in Maggie Valley, NC which is the very heart of Cherokee country, but he could not hold on to it because of the repeated attacks of the Cherokees. There are many reports of atrocities committed by both the natives and the Scots. It is the roots of almost constants turmoil, the love of fighting and an independent nature, especially their religion, which the so-called Scots-Irish have in their hearts and souls. Actually, the Scots-Irish are not a mix of Scots and the Irish; it is Scots that immigrated to Ulster, Ireland before coming to America and it is these Ulster Scots that are my ancestors on my father’s side. It is known that nearly all the troops fighting for the Patriots in the Revolutionary War in the south were Scots that came down out of the mountains and using guerilla type tactics like they use against the Indians and against the staid and upright British to great effect. They demonstrated their ferocity at the Battle of Cowpens where Patriot General Daniel Morgan outmaneuvered the infamous British Colonel Banastre Tarleton and would have annihilated the entire army of British/Loyalists but some of them escaped the wrath of Morgan’s wild-eyed mountain men. But there were no escapees at the Battle of Kings Mountain. This group of Patriots was led by General John Sevier and was able to trap British General John Ferguson and his army of Loyalists on the peak of a mountain by surrounding the base. General Ferguson fought for a while but then realized that there was no escape and surrendered. The surrender was not accepted and the Patriots waded in and either shot or hanged them all to a man. This massacre was brought about because of Tarleton killing 220 Patriots that had surrendered but were bayoneted by Tarleton’s troops angering the Patriots and especially the mountain men. They sought revenge and found it. My ancestry comes from the Holston Valley of Tennessee and the mountains of Habersham County Georgia. That’s right folks; I am a Redneck and/or a Cracker albeit a well read and well spoken one. I am proud of my ancestors.



The Scots proved their heritage again during the Civil War, some fought in gray and some fought in blue but they fought with great zeal just for the sheer joy of it.



This epistle in no way covers everything that happened to the Ulster Scots during this time period but it gives you an idea of the mold that formed them.



This date in history August 31



1777 On this date Patriot Captain Samuel Mason survived a savage Indian attack on Fort Henry (which he commanded) on the Ohio frontier. The Indians were a montage of different tribes in the Ohio valley, Mason was a member of a distinguished Virginia family. At the beginning of the attack, a few of Mason’s troops were caught outside the stockade trying to retrieve some livestock and drive them back inside the fort. Mason and 14 other troops rushed outside to help those trapped outside but that is just what the Indians wanted and ambushed them. All of the rescuers were killed except Mason. He was severely wounded and crawled under a log and was not detected. Yet another rescue team ran out to help Mason and they were wiped out also. Eventually Mason made his way back into the fort, recovered from his wounds and stayed the fort commander for several more years. Later on Mason fell on hard times and was accused of thievery. Mason responded by going deeper into the western frontier which meant those settlements on the Mississippi River. For reasons known only to Mason, he organized a small gang including his brother, and began preying on the boats and barges traveling the river plus raids on some of the villages and settlers on the Natchez Trace. Mason’s gang enjoyed quite a bit of success because of the lack of law enforcement. Remember, west of the River belonged to France, we had not yet made the Louisiana Purchase. Eventually Mason and his gang was captured on the west bank of the river by French troops and delivered to Colonial officials at the Natchez, Mississippi outpost. The gang shot their way out by killing three guards. After this a large reward was put on Mason’s head, dead or alive. The money was too much of a temptation for a couple of Mason’s gang members and they killed and beheaded Mason and took the head to the Natchez outpost to try and collect the reward. A couple of the officials at Natchez outpost recognized the two as being members of Mason’s gang and they were promptly hanged. To this day, no one has ever figured out why Mason went on the other side of the law, but greed was his undoing.



1939 On this date Adolph Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland and 58 divisions mass on the Polish border in a line about 1,700 miles long. Hitler had been warned by Great Britain, France and Spain that any invasion into Poland would mean war. So Hitler sends a few German soldiers across into Poland dressed in Polish uniforms and had them re-cross into Germany and destroy a few inconsequential buildings. They then brought in several prisoners, dressed them in Polish uniforms and them killed them and claimed that Poland had invaded Germany and were killed and here are the bodies to prove it. After that, the 58 division cranked up and crossed the Polish frontier led by swarms of Panzer and Tiger tanks. The brave but foolish Polish cavalry responds with a charge on horseback like they did in the days of Napoleon. Of course they were annihilated. The next afternoon war was declared on Germany by the majority of the rest of Europe and hell ensued.



1864 This day sees the Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia. US General William T. Sherman had been slugging his way toward Atlanta from Chattanooga, Tennessee, a distance of about 100 miles whist facing the CSA army commanded by CSA General Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston was a believer in rock solid defense and let the enemy beat their brains out trying to crack it. That strategy was not working with Sherman and the CSA army had been constantly retreating since Chattanooga. A few days earlier, CSA President Davis had relieved Johnston and installed CSA General John Bell Hood who was known to be very aggressive. Hood did not disappoint and ordered several attacks on the Union army but the CSA army suffered appalling losses to the point that the CSA army was deemed ineffective. On this day General Sherman orders the capture of the railroad south of Atlanta near Jonesboro, Georgia. This was the last supply route into Atlanta. A CSA division commanded by General William Hardee attacks the dug in Union troops near Jonesboro and is repulsed with staggering losses and the Union forces cut the railroad and that was the end of Atlanta, Georgia.



1985 Earlier a man the newspapers named “The Night Stalker” had been terrorizing the people of Los Angeles. He would sneak into a house late at night, shoot any men present and then rape, kill and mutilate any women there. The police had a hell of a time finding out who it was because he left no witnesses. He had murdered at least 12 people before the police got a break and was able to identify the prime suspect as Richard Ramirez. The police debated as to whether or not to publish his photo and describe his car in the newspaper being afraid it would warn Ramirez that they were on to him. Fortunately Ramirez was on a road trip and when he arrived in Los Angeles late in this day, he saw his face on the front page of the paper and on TV. He was driving down the street in a Latino neighborhood when he was recognized. The men in the neighborhood dragged that son-of-a-bitch out of his car and began beating the living shit out of him. The police finally arrive and dragged Ramirez away from the howling mob just in time or he would have been killed. During his trial he yelled and screamed at the jury claiming he was a devil worshipper. He was sentenced to death and yelled on his way out of the courtroom that he was not afraid of death; it was part of his reward of worshipping the Devil. But this bastard filed appeals which were denied, of course, but if he awaited death why was he appealing the death penalty? All of that courtroom bravado was bullshit. He is as afraid of death like the rest of us. He remains on death row to this day. Like I say, lets go back to medieval times with monsters such as this.



Born today:



1870 Italian educator Maria Montessori. She said “If help and salvation are to come, it must come from the children because from children we get men and women.” Sound wisdom, Maria.



1903 US actor Arthur Godfrey. He said “I am proud to pay taxes in this great country, but I would just as proud at half the price.” Me too, Arthur, me too.



1918 US songwriter Alan Jay Lerner. He said “I am a great fan of females, and I have the bills to prove it.” Been there, done that, have tee shirt.



1935 US activist and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. He said “You don’t have to teach people to be human, you have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.” That is a pretty deep though there, Eldridge.



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.