An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America. J. P. Maclean
followed. Destruction and misery everywhere abounded. To judge a former condition of a people by their present extremity affords a distorted view of the picture.
Fire and sword, war and rapine, desolation and atrocity, perpetrated upon a high-spirited and generous people, cannot conduce to the best moral condition. Left in poverty and galled by outrage, wrongs will be resorted to which otherwise would be foreign to a natural disposition. If the influences of a more refined age had not penetrated the remote glens, then a rougher reprisal must be expected. The coarseness, vice, rapacity, and inhumanity of the oppressor must of necessity have a corresponding influence on their better natures. If to this it be added that some of the chiefs were naturally fierce, the origin of the sad features could readily be determined. Whatever vices practiced or wrongs perpetrated, the example was set before them by their more powerful and better conditioned neighbors. Among the crimes enumerated is that some of the chiefs increased their scanty incomes by kidnapping boys or men, whom they sold as slaves to the American planters. If this be true, and in all probability it was, there must have been confederates engaged in maritime pursuits. But they did not have far to go for this lesson, for this nefarious trade was taught them, at their very doors, by the merchants of Aberdeen, who were "noted for a scandalous system of decoying young boys from the country and selling them as slaves to the planters in Virginia. It was a trade which in the early part of the eighteenth century, was carried on to a considerable extent through the Highlands; and a case which took place about 1742 attracted much notice a few years later, when one of the victims having escaped from servitude, returned to Aberdeen, and published a narrative of his sufferings, seriously implicating some of the magistracy of the town. He was prosecuted and condemned for libel by the local authorities, but the case was afterwards carried to Edinburgh. The iniquitous system of kidnapping was fully exposed, and the judges of the supreme court unanimously reversed the verdict of the Aberdeen authorities and imposed a heavy fine upon the provost, the four bailies, and the dean of guild. *** An atrocious case of this kind, which shows clearly the state of the Highlands, occurred in 1739. Nearly one hundred men, women and children were seized in the dead of night on the islands of Skye and Harris, pinioned, horribly beaten, and stowed away in a ship bound for America, in order to be sold to the planters. Fortunately the ship touched at Donaghadee in Ireland, and the prisoners, after undergoing the most frightful sufferings, succeeded in escaping."[4]
Under existing circumstances it was but natural that the more enterprising, and especially that intelligent portion who had lost their heritable jurisdiction, should turn with longing eyes to another country. America offered the most inviting asylum. Although there was some emigration to America during the first half of the eighteenth century, yet it did not fairly set in until about 1760. Between the years 1763 and 1775 over twenty thousand Highlanders left their homes to seek a better retreat in the forests of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Description of the Western Islands," pp. 199, 200.
[2] "Letters from the North," Vol. II., p. 167.
[3] Lord Mahon's "History of England," Vol. III, pp. 308–311.
[4] Lecky's "History of England," Vol. II, p. 274.
CHAPTER II.
The Scotch-Irish in America.
The name Scotland was never applied to that country, now so designated, before the tenth century, but was called Alban, Albania, Albion. At an early period Ireland was called Scotia, which name was exclusively so applied before the tenth century. Scotia was then a territorial or geographical term, while Scotus was a race name or generic term, implying people as well as country. "The generic term of Scoti embraced the people of that race whether inhabiting Ireland or Britain. As this term of Scotia was a geographical term derived from the generic name of a people, it was to some extent a fluctuating name, and though applied at first to Ireland, which possessed the more distinctive name of Hibernia, as the principal seat of the race from whom the name was derived, it is obvious that, if the people from whom the name was taken inhabited other countries, the name itself would have a tendency to pass from the one to the other, according to the prominence which the different settlements of the race assumed in the history of the world; and as the race of the Scots in Britain became more extended, and their power more formidable, the territorial name would have a tendency to fix itself where the race had become most conspicuous. … The name in its Latin form of Scotia, was transferred from Ireland to Scotland in the reign of Malcolm the Second, who reigned from 1004 to 1034. The 'Pictish Chronicle,' compiled before 997, knows nothing of the name of Scotia as applied to North Britain; but Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second 'rex Scotiae,' and Brian, king of Ireland, 'rex Hiberniae.' The author of the 'Life of St. Cadroe,' in the eleventh century, likewise applies the name of Scotia to North Britain."[5]
A strong immigration early set in from the north of Ireland to the western parts of Scotland. It was under no leadership, but more in the nature of an overflow, or else partaking of the spirit of adventure. This was accelerated in the year 503, when a new colony of Dalriadic Scots, under the leadership of Fergus, son of Eric, left Ireland and settled on the western coast of Argyle and the adjacent isles. From Fergus was derived the line of Scoto-Irish kings, who finally, in 843, ascended the Pictish throne.
The inhabitants of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland were but branches of the same Keltic stock, and their language was substantially the same. There was not only more or less migrations between the two countries, but also, to a greater or less extent, an impinging between the people.
Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, is composed of the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. Formerly it was the seat of the O'Neills, as well as the lesser septs of O'Donnell, O'Cahan, O'Doherty, Maguire, MacMahon, etc. The settlements made by the earlier migrations of the Highlanders were chiefly on the coast of Antrim. These settlements were connected with and dependent on the Clandonald of Islay and Kintyre. The founder of this branch of that powerful family was John Mor, second son of "the good John of Islay," who, about the year 1400, married Majory Bisset, heiress of the Glens, in Antrim, and thus acquired a permanent footing. The family was not only strengthened by settling cadets of its own house as tenants in the territory of the Glens, but also by intermarriages with the families of O'Neill, O'Donnell, and others. In extending its Irish possessions the Clandonald was brought into frequent conflicts and feuds with the Irish of Ulster. In 1558 the Hebrideans had become so strong in Ulster that the archbishop of Armagh urged on the government the advisability of their expulsion by procuring their Irish neighbors, O'Donnell, O'Neill, O'Cahan, and others, to unite against them. In 1565 the MacDonalds suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Shane O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. The Scottish islanders still continued to exercise considerable power. Sorley Buy MacDonald, a man of great courage, soon extended his influence over the adjacent territories, in so much so that in 1575–1585, the English were forced to turn their attention to the progress of the Scots. The latter having been defeated, an agreement was made in which Sorley Buy was granted four districts. His eldest son, Sir James MacSorley Buy, or MacDonell of Dunluce, became a strenuous