Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America | James Webb

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America | James Webb | Highly readable

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Born Fighting: How...

	Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America James Webb Broadway, 2005 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 141 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England?s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.

Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the full journey of this remarkable cultural group, and the profound, but unrecognized, role it has played in the shaping of America. Written with the storytelling verve that has earned his works such acclaim as ?captivating . . . unforgettable? (the Wall Street Journal on Lost Soliders), Scots-Irishman James Webb, Vietnam combat veteran and former Naval Secretary, traces the history of his people, beginning nearly two thousand years ago at Hadrian?s Wall, when the nation of Scotland was formed north of the Wall through armed conflict in contrast to England?s formation to the south through commerce and trade. Webb recounts the Scots? odyssey?their clashes with the English in Scotland and then in Ulster, their retreat from one war-ravaged land to another. Through engrossing chronicles of the challenges the Scots-Irish faced, Webb vividly portrays how they developed the qualities that helped settle the American frontier and define the American character.

Born Fighting shows that the Scots-Irish were 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston; they were the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain; and they have given America numerous great military leaders, including Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Audie Murphy, and George S. Patton, as well as most of the soldiers of the Confederacy (only 5 percent of whom owned slaves, and who fought against what they viewed as an invading army). It illustrates how the Scots-Irish redefined American politics, creating the populist movement and giving the country a dozen presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. And it explores how the Scots-Irish culture of isolation, hard luck, stubbornness, and mistrust of the nation?s elite formed and still dominates blue-collar America, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country music.

Both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary America, Born Fighting reintroduces America to its most powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group?one too often ignored or taken for granted.

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Want to know why so many Americans cling to guns and religion?

Many good reviews of this book have been written since 2004; however, with the election year in full swing and the statement concerning certain culture areas of the US "clinging to their guns and religion", this book it quite timely. James explains, the history behind this culture why guns and religion are so important to it. There definitely are reasons and I suggest you read the book to learn those reasons. This particular culture is also growing faster than any culture in the US with their Bluegrass and Country music, Nascar, etc.

Highly readable

Virginia Senator James Webb has written a highly-readable history of a fascinating people that doesn't feel like at all like a textbook, though it would make a good one. Instead, it seemed almost like reading a "family history." I'm of Scots-Irish descent and a native and resident of East TN. My 88-year-old mother, born and bred in Southwest Virginia, loved the book also.

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You can't stomp `em out and you can't make `em run...

I read this right after McWhiney's Cracker Culture and Fischer's Albion's Seed, both of which cover a lot of the same ground as Born Fighting. Webb takes us in a more personal direction, however, telling the story of the Scots-Irish's origins and their taming of the American heartland largely through the history of his own family.

I found very interesting Webb's statement that it is "undeniable" that FDR "persistently maneuvered" the U.S. into WWII. That's hardly an earth shattering theory nowadays, but I didn't expect to hear it from a high ranking Democrat.

In any case, it would be hard to award less than five stars to any book that between the same two covers acknowledges the greatness of George Patton, Chesty Puller, Johnny Cash, Hank Jr, Steve Earle, Tom Petty, Three Doors Down, Cool Hand Luke and the Jacksons Andrew, Stonewall and Alan.

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Understanding the Liberal/Redneck Divide

This book about the Scots-Irish back-country culture talks at length about how proud Webb is to be from the warrior culture whose heartland is in the Southern Appalachians and which has been spat upon by cultural elites since antebellum days, when the lowland Southern plantation owners tried to exclude their white upcountry brethren from the political process as much as possible. Webb might be the only senator around who wouldn't be ashamed of being called a redneck, because he takes it to be a sign of dignity, honor, courage, and loyalty to a higher cause. I'm speculating about that, but it seems entirely plausible to me.

I read this book a couple years ago, before Webb joined the Senate, but I remember it as a very aggressive defense of his ancestral people, the back-country Scots-Irish, and a recounting of all they had done for the U.S. Especially their crucial role in the military history of the country: Andrew Jackson, MacArthur, and Patton included, to name three famous generals. It goes overboard at times, but it's a book worth reading, especially if you're the sort of person who could be called an urban intellectual liberal. I say that because it goes far beyond Wal-Mart, NASCAR, hunting, and images from Deliverance in defining the backwoods South as a culture and outlining its accomplishments.

Webb seems to be one of the very few Democrats on the national stage who represents this culture, and he's shown that opposition to President Bush and fierce attachment to the military are not mutually exclusive. It's not hard to envision a future in which he becomes more prominent for that very reason. Along with providing a vision that takes outsiders to his culture beyond the tired stereotypes of the rural South, Webb provides some very important clues to the core of his own personal and political values in this book.

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