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Scotland's Mark on America by George Fraser Black
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It is a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human
freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the
sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the
sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien,
and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions
under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender
attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of
the Motherland, keep in touch with the simple annals of our
childhood's home, or the home of our kin, bask in the fireside glow of
its homely humor, or dwell in imagination amid the haunts of old
romance, we are the better Americans for the Scottish heritage from
which heart and mind alike derive inspiration and delight.

It is as difficult to separate the current of Scottish migration to
the American Colonies, or to the United States that grew out of them,
from the larger stream which issued from England, as it is to
distinguish during the last two hundred years the contributions by
Scotsmen from those of Englishmen to the great body of English
literature. We have the first census of the new Republic, in the year
1790, and an investigator who classified this enumeration according to
what he conceived to be the nationality of the names, found that the
total free, white, population numbering 3,250,000 contained 2,345,844
people of English origin; 188,589 of Scottish origin, and 44,273 of
Irish origin. The system of classification is manifestly loose, and
the distribution of parent nationalities entirely at variance with
known facts. That part of the population described as Irish was
largely Ulster-Scottish, the true Irish never having emigrated in any
considerable numbers until they felt the pressure of the potato
famine, fifty years later. There is excellent authority for the
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