Born Fighting

Is on TV here. Its being produced by both Scottish Television and Ulster Television. Smithsonian Television (America) is also involved so it will probably be seen in America too.

The term Ulster Scots

1640: The first use of the term “Ulster Scots”

Wentworth’s adviser in Ireland was Sir George Radcliffe. He was deeply concerned that the Covenanter Army, under the command of the Earl of Argyle, might come to Ulster. On 8th October 1640 Radcliffe wrote (citing the famous assassination which had caused Robert the Bruce to flee to Rathlin Island over 300 years before):

“...Many thousands in the North never took the oath... they will shortly return, to any that dares question them, such an answer as Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, made to Sir John Comyn, who, charging him with breach of oath, taken at Westminster to King Edward, replies, with cleaving his head in two. None is so dim-sighted, but sees the general inclination of the Ulster Scots to the covenant: and God forbid they should tarry there till the Earl of Argyll brings them arms to cut our throats...”

Radcliffe was the first to use the term “Ulster Scots”.

From Texas to Carrickfergus

Depending on your location in the world you may or may not be able to watch this video from the BBC about the Ulster-Scots connections of one man's roots in the Texas panhandle.

Americans visit Ulster

Recieved this in my email. Maybe one of the American channels will get it.

Dear All,

Please see below, details of a new 3 part documentary following a group of Ulster-Scots from the US as they visit Northern Ireland to trace their roots and discover a little more about their Ulster heritage.

I know this will be of interest to a lot of you - so don’t forget - “We’r Fur Hame” starts Monday 17th January 2011 at 19.00hrs on BBC2 - the series runs for 3 weeks.

Regards,

Iain

Stonewall Jackson's ancestral home near Belfast, Ulster

Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson is widely considered one of the greatest military geniuses in all of history. Jackson was both a devout Christian and a fierce warrior. His ancestral home is a just a short drive south from Belfast and its remains is pictured here.

Ulster has powerful enemy in Congressman Peter King

In the person of Peter King, the incoming Chairman of the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, the people of Ulster have a confirmed enemy. In fact, Congressman King has cheered for terrorists who have killed and wounded innocent people in Northern Ireland. It's frightening that such a man has as much power as he now does. Columnist and libertarian author Williams Norman Grigg writes:

After spending decades canvassing his fellow Irish-American Catholics to raise money for terrorists in Northern Ireland, King has promised to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of American Muslim congregations and cultural organizations in search of people providing "material support" for Islamic terrorism.... King, whose Long Island district has a large and well-organized Irish-American constituency, was one of the group's most effective fundraisers and one of the IRA's staunchest supporters.

"We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry," King declared during a 1982 rally on behalf of the IRA in Nassau County. The "Provos" heartily reciprocated King's affection.

"During his visits to Ireland, Mr. King would often stay with well-known leaders of the IRA, and he socialized in IRA drinking haunts," recalled Irish journalist Ed Moloney, author of the definitive work A Secret History of the IRA, in a 2005 New York Sun profile written after King's tardy and reluctant break with the group. "At one of such clubs, the Felons, membership was limited to IRA veterans who had served time in jail."

Granted, many honorable and decent men – from Northern Ireland and elsewhere – have become familiar with the inside of a prison cell. But the ex-convicts with whom King socialized during his visits to Ireland generally weren't innocent political prisoners.

1892 John C.Calhoun speaks

Not so sure about the 'yankee' bit! lol

At the 1892 convention of the Scotch-Irish Society of America in Atlanta, Georgia lawyer Patrick Calhoun, grandson of Scotch-Irish-descended John C. Calhoun had the following to say about the Scotch-Irish in Georgia:

The Scotch-Irish have stamped an imperishable impression upon Georgia. For those homely virtues of thrift, industry and economy which have caused the people of this State to be termed the Yankees of the South; for that dauntless and invincible courage which has immortalized the conduct of her soldiers upon the field of battle; for all those splendid qualities which enabled her people to erect the fabric of pure and honest government out of the corrupting chaos of Reconstruction, and to move forward so rapidly and successfully in the march of progress as to justly win for her the proud rank of the "Empire State of the South," Georgia is deeply indebted to that noble race in whose history, traced through their career here and their earlier settlements in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania back to old Ulster, and further still to the lowlands and craggy highlands of Scotland, the electric search light of the nineteenth century discloses not a single page blurred by servile submission to native wrong or foreigh yoke. (Quoted in: "The Georgia Scotch-Irish," Orville A. Park, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, June 1928, pp. 115-135)