I also wonder (although this story doesn’t mention it) if the Scots’ intervention on the confederate side had anything to do with their historic antagonism against the Irish. Irish immigrated by the boatload during the Civil War years. Most of them were “encouraged” to join the Union Army because jobs were scarce. In the old country, the Brits traditionally hired the Scots to “oversee” their estates in Ireland. Scots were notorious as harsh overseers and it would seem natural that they would not choose the same side if they wanted to join the conflict over here.
Sorry, but whats you posted is nonsense.
Firstly, the Scots and Irish historically were allies until the 17thC. The Scots fought for Ireland from the 12th to early 17th centuries, most famously the ‘gallowglasses’, or Western Scottish/West Highland mercenaries.
The Irish helped fight the English in 1296, and of course Celtic/Scots-Irish history stretches back to BC /early AD times. The Cruthin and Dalraidic kings of Ulster had a kingdom which stretched over sea from north Ireland to west Scotland.
There WAS only one antagonism in that period, when Edward Bruce, Robert’s brother, landed in Ireland in 1318 and raised an Irish army to a—help Scotland and b—liberate Ireland (Robert the Bruce wanted a pan-Celtic alliance of a free Scotland, Ireland and Wales). Many Irish supported it, but some Anglo-Irish fought him and the landing was unsuccessful. Ironically, the Scots at home beat the English and even successfully launched punitive raids/invasions of England in 1318, 1319 and 1322 where they won several victories on English soil.
The antagonism between scot and irish didnt start until the (protestant)former transplanted to north Ireland in 1607. And even then Catholic Scots and more liberal Protestant Scots at home had no problem with the Catholic Irish.
And even then there is evidence in Ulster itself that the ‘new’ Scottish settlers and some Catholic Irish intermarried in the 17th C, so even the undoubted antagonism (which most famously flared up in the 1641 Catholic rebellion) wasnt quite as wholesale as legend has it.
In fact even in 1641, the Catholic Irish armies attacked far more the English settlers and English troops than Scottish families.
Secondly, the Scots were NOT ‘overseers’ in Ulster. They were a buffer zone between the English and the Catholic Irish. The ‘plantation of Ulster’ in the 17th C happened under the Stuart kings who ruled Britain, and of course the Stuarts were Scottish, notably James VI of Scotland/James I of England, Wales and Ireland. And it happened because of bad famines in Scotland which left many Scots, esp in the south and west, champing at the bit to try new fertile lands.
They were not overseers, they were simply the people who unlike English settlers to Ulster, were willing to work the land in NI south and west of Belfast and by default became the ‘buffer people’.
In fact, despite their hard work, the Scots/Ulster Scots/Scots-Irish/Scotch-Irish were so arrogantly treated by the predominantly English elite in both Ulster and Britain that in the 18th C alone, 275000 at least emigrated to America alone (excluding Canada, Australia, Scotland and England) and became the backbone of the rebellious forces in 1776....
‘if i am to die, then let it be with the scotch-irish of my native virginia...’
—George Washington, 1779
Some old notes on Ireland that may be of interest:
a-—’Historian Brendan O’ Buachalla has stated that in the 17th and 18th centuries,there was extensive intermingling and intermarriage between the new Scots settlers and the ‘native’ Irish,so that by the 19th century,there existed in Ulster several population groups,apart from many individuals scattered here,partly of Irish descent,partly of Scottish descent and Irish in language and belonged to one of the Protestant faiths’
Ian Adamson ‘The Identity of Ulster’ (1982) page 15
b—’The fact that many native Irish became Protestants is well illustrated for example by the Hearth Money Rolls for the Presbyterian parishes of Stranorlar and Leck in Donegal for the year 1665,as well as the by the presence of old Cruthinic names such as Rooney,Lowry,MacCartan and MacGuinness in the records of the Episcopalian Diocese of Dromore in South and West Down.Representatives of other well-known Gaelic families abound.Murphys,Maguires,Kellys,Lennons,Reillys,Doghertys and many others are quite numerous.Historian Brendan Adamas has shown that quote “a large part of the native Irish became absorbed in areas such as the North Down into the various Protestant faiths” ‘
Adamson The Ulster People(1991) page 60
c—’Neither must it be assumed that all the Scottish emigrants to Ulster in the Plantation were Protestant.For some were Scottish and English Catholics.Thus a letter from the Bishop of Derry to the Lord Earl of Abercorn in 1692 says that “Sir George Hamilton since he got part of the Popery there,has brought over priests and Jesuits from Scotland”.Historian A Perceval-Maxwell has shown that within just a generation one of the most sucessful parts of the ‘Protestant’ Plantation was in fact led by Roman Catholics’
Adamson(1991)—page 60
ATQ Stewart,THE historian and authority on Ulster history:
‘There was much intermarriage,with or without the benefit of the clergy than convential history makes allowance for.Many planters became Catholic and many natives became Protestant.
It is a gross and emotional oversimplification to see the Ulster Plantation in terms of ruthless Protestants seizing land and chasing the Catholics into the bogs and the hills.
In fact,history and recent archaeology shows us that in fact a very substantial proportion of the original population was not disturbed at all’
‘The Narrow Ground-Studies of Ulster History’(1986)