equally wide gulf from the aristocratic planter communities that
flourished in the tide-water regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Near
the coast the lines of division between the colonies corresponded fairly
well with the differences between the populations; but after striking
the foothills, though the political boundaries continued to go east and
west, those both of ethnic and of physical significance began to run
north and south.

The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage, and of mixed
race; but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the
Presbyterian Irish--the Scotch-Irish as they were often called. Full
credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their
leadership in our history; nor have we been altogether blind to the
deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; but it is doubtful if we have
wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and
virile people, the Irish whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and
Calvin. These Irish representatives of the Covenanters were in the west
almost what the Puritans were in the northeast, and more than the
Cavaliers were in the south. Mingled with the descendants of many other
races, they nevertheless formed the kernel of the distinctively and
intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their
march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers, who with
axe and rifle won their way from the Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and
the Pacific.[2]

The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a mixed people. Though
mainly descended from Scotch ancestors--who came originally from both
lowlands and highlands, from among both the Scotch Saxons and the Scotch
Celts,[3]--many of them were of English, a few of French Huguenot,[4]
and quite a number of true old Milesian Irish[5] extraction. They were