THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF THE SOUTH...continued
BY HON. WM. WIRT HENRY, LL.D., OF VIRGINIA
« previous page | start of article | next page »
Proceeding southward, we next enter the great colony of Virginia, and here we can more clearly discover the effect of this people upon her destiny.
Traces of the Scotch-Irish were found in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and early in the eighteenth they were found in Albemarle, Nelson, Campbell, Prince Edward, and Charlotte counties, and along the great valley west of the Blue Ridge. But it was after the year 1738 that they entered that valley in great numbers, and, with the exception of some German settlements near its lower end, completely possessed it from the Pennsylvania to the North Carolina line. In that year the Synod of Philadelphia (upon the application of John Caldwell, a Scotch-Irish elder, afterward settled at Cub creek, in Charlotte county, Va., and the grandfather of the great statesman, John Caldwell Calhoun), sent a commissioner to the governor of Virginia with a proposal to people the valley with Presbyterians, who should hold the western frontier against the Indians and thus protect the colony,'upon one condition only, "that they be allowed the liberty of their consciences and of worshiping God in a way agreeable to the principles of their education." To this Governor Gooch, himself a Scotchman, returned a gracious answer and a promise of the protection afforded by the Act of Toleration.
With this agreement the territory west of the Blue Ridge was soon filled with a Scotch-Irish population, who were glad to defend the cavaliers of the colony from the implacable savage as the price of civil and religious liberty. Living in continual danger from the treacherous foe, their faithful rifles were their constant companions, and were seen even in the school-houses and the churches which invariably marked their settlements. In the pulpit the trusty rifle was as convenient to the preacher as the Bible. With such a training, no wonder that this noble race soon demonstrated their right to control the destinies of their colony, in peace as well as in war. As the country filled up, new counties were set off, and the delegates from these and from the Piedmont counties of kindred blood, together known as back or upper counties, began to control the House of Burgesses. In the wars which preceded the Revolution, the soldiers of Virginia were mainly drawn from this section. They suffered defeat with Washington at the Meadows, and with Braddock at Fort Duquesne, and, by their firmness, saved the remnant of that rash general's army. They won the signal victory at Point Pleasant, in 1774, which struck terror into the Indian tribes across the Ohio, and was the prelude to the War of Independence, for which the officers engaged in that battle at once offered their swords.