The roots of a nation: The Scots Irish that built America

• Bill Clinton, American president from 1993 to 2001, is connected to the Scots Irish through his mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy. His mother's great great grandparents, Levi and Rachel Cassady, can be traced back to Roslea, County Fermanagh. Picture: AFP/Getty

THE late summer sun is shining through the bay windows of an elegant town house of honey-coloured stone in Glasgow's West End, and James Henry Webb Jr the senior United States Senator for Virginia is settled into a hard-backed wooden chair and chuckling about the time he almost slugged the president of the US. He jokes: "It was very Scottish."

The confrontation, which ruffled more than a few political feathers, took place at a White House reception for newly elected representatives to Congress in November, 2006, a few weeks after Webb, inset right, a successful author, highly decorated Vietnam veteran and former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, won the seat for the Democratic Party. A staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, he had stomped the campaign trail wearing a pair of grubby combat boots, passed on to him by his son, a Marine then fighting amid the dirt and dust and IEDs of George W Bush's "war on terror".

At the White House reception Webb preferred not to stand in line to be photographed with a man he had so vehemently criticised during his campaign, later explaining: "I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W Bush on my wall." Afterwards Bush approached him and in his brisk, matey manner snapped: "How's your boy?"

Webb replied: "I'd like to get him out of Iraq, Mr President."

Bush said: "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?"

Webb answered: "That's between me and my boy, Mr President."

Later it was reported that Webb was so annoyed about the exchange that he was tempted to "slug" Bush. Viewers of the new documentary Senator Webb was able to make for STV – instead of languishing in a Federal penitentiary – will be grateful his cooler side prevailed. Yet the exchange was not without criticism on both sides, with Webb dismissed as a "boor" who had deducted from Washington's "civility and clear speaking" while Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's former speechwriter wrote: "I thought it had the sound of the rattling little aggressions of our day, but not on Mr Webb's side."

That brief political discussion with the president was, believes, Senator Webb, was shaped by the legacy of the Scots-Irish, his forefathers, the men and women who built America and the reason he is sitting in that West End drawing room today.

Too often dismissed as "red-necks" or subsumed among the stories of the Scots or the Irish, the unique and inspirational tale of the distinctive Scots-Irish or "Scotch-Irish" as the Americans prefer to describe them is one of democratic values, fierce individualism and a refusal to cow down to power or authority in whatever form it takes be it distant king or all too present president.

"I'm a bottom-up person and I think I represent a very significant population of the US, many of whom came out of Scotland. We produced great military leaders, great political leaders, but on the other hand we don't have a great emphasis on education and the definition of this group is: 'I can be had, but I can't be bought.'"

When we spoke that evening last August, Senator Webb had just completed the first few days of filming a new two-part documentary, a co-production between STV, UTV in Northern Ireland and the Smithsonian Channel in America, a project which began when Alan Clements, head of programmes at STV and a history buff first read Webb's book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, figured it was worth a call to his office and left an hour later with a new and keen collaborator.

Prior to his election, Senator Webb wrote a series of successful novels and screenplays, including Rules of Engagement which starred Samuel L Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. In fact, sex scenes from his novels were used by his opponent in an unsuccessful attempt to discredit him.

Born Fighting, the book, and now the documentary, tells the largely forgotten story of the Scots-Irish and how their characteristics helped form America, and reached out through figures such as Dolly Parton, Rosa Parks – the black civil rights pioneer who talked with pride of her Scots-Irish great-grandmother – and Neil Armstrong, the astronaut and the first man on the moon.

So who are the Scots-Irish? They are the descendants of Presbyterian men and women who emigrated from Scotland, largely Ayrshire, Galloway and the Borders, in the 17th century to colonise Ulster on land confiscated from the Irish nobility by James VI. They were hardened in a crucible of near constant conflict.

In 1641 they survived the massacres of the Irish Rebellion which saw between 4-6,000 settlers killed over the winter; endured the Irish Confederate Wars, when an army from Scotland was landed to shield them against other Irish landowners, and witnessed Cromwell's conquering of the country in the 1650s. A generation later, when the Protestant William of Orange fought against the Catholic James II for the British throne, the Ulster Scots fought by William's side, particularly during the siege of Derry. Yet it was a loyalty that would go unrewarded.

In the 1690s tens of thousands of Scots arrived in Ulster, fleeing famine in their native land and tipping the balance of power away from the Anglo-Irish. In 1703, Queen Anne brought in the Test Act to right this imbalance and so prevent anyone who was not a member of the established and Episcopalian Church of Ireland from holding office and stripping other faiths of the right to worship, preach or enter lawful marriages. Weary of being sandwiched between the Episcopalian English and the Catholic Irish, the Presbyterian Scots were drawn further west by the siren call of the captains of the flax ships bearing cargo from the New World of America.

In April 1719 sixteen Presbyterian Scots-Irish families settled in New Hampshire in a village they called Londonderry.

Crossing the Atlantic was a grim experience, which lasted 12 weeks and, in the rare times when food ran out, led passengers to indulge in cannibalising the dead or, in the case of one poor Mr Fisher, one who the group decided should die so the rest could live.

The "fightin" Scots-Irish were particularly welcomed by the Pacifist Quakers, who held sway in Pennsylvania and whose faith prevented them from raising a militia to protect the settlement against Indian attack. Their solution was to invite the Scots-Irish to form a series of fortress settlements to act as a buffer and so, over the next few decades, the group spread across the colonies.

The same idea occurred to the governor of Virginia who invited them to populate the Shenandoah valley, and soon men born in Ulster were fighting off Indians, and, over time, the French until, after 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, the "mountain men" of West Virginia were fighting the British Army. One of the pivotal battles of the campaign was "Kings Mountain" when the Scots-Irish vanquished 1200 of the British army while sustaining minimal casualties.

It was not just their skills in a fight that they carried over the Atlantic, but the democratic values of the Kirk – which bled into the politics – a love of music, particularly the fiddle, which helped form the backbone of country music, and their faith, which was to form the buckle of the nation's bible belt. And, of course, the whisky.

Among the first Scots-Irish to arrive in America were the parents of Andrew Jackson, who was a child soldier during the revolution, when he was slashed in the face, and who would rise to become the seventh president of the United States and the first of 17 of Scots-Irish extraction including Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Webb's nemesis, George W Bush.

Back in the living room, where Senator Webb is chatting before heading off for a dinner with a cross-section of Scotland's politicians, he explains that his political hero is president Jackson: "He redefined American politics in a way that was right out of the Scottish Kirk. He was the first president who was not of the English aristocracy, either the landed aristocracy out of Virginia or the intellectual aristocracy out of Boston. He was vilified at the time, people didn't realise it.

John Quincy Adams, who preceded him, called him a barbarian and refused to go to his inaugural. Thomas Jefferson said he was dangerous and unfit to be president, but he established the principle that you measure the health of a society not at its apex but at its base."

At the time we met, American troops were leaving Iraq, a war he called a "huge strategic blunder", and ramping up in Afghanistan, of which he remained unsure: "Our people are really good, but strategically what are we doing?" He disagreed with the release of the Lockerbie bomber: "I'm not happy that that individual was released, but things happen", but hinted that the Scottish Government did what they could: "I know that the leadership of the Scottish Government was trying to communicate with our government, I know they were."

Senator Webb preferred not to comment on the issue of independence: "It's not my place to come over here and… I'm doing a cultural history and I have a really good friendship with Alex Salmond and I think he is doing a really good job, but I don't think it is my place to come in and comment on Scottish politics."

However he remains deeply grateful and anxious to publicise the contribution Scots made to American politics.

"We are telling the Scottish part of the story and one of the great surprises when I was writing the book was realising that the implication of the Protestant Reformation was not simply religious.

When the sacraments were eliminated and the Scottish Kirk evolved they sowed the seeds for the popular style of democracy. It was a remarkable experiment and the American popular style of democracy came out of the Scottish Kirk."

• Born Fighting is broadcast on STV at 8 pm on Tuesday 1 February.FACTFILE

• Around 3.5 million Americans refer to themselves as Scots Irish – or Scotch Irish, the term more commonly used in the US.

• An estimated 250,000 Protestants and Presbyterians migrated to America from Ulster during the colonial era.

• Most of these Protestant dissidents had originally moved to Ireland from Scotland and England during the Plantation of Ulster, in the 17th century.

• Many Scots Irish settled in the Appalachian mountains – where Gaelic and Celtic words are in use to this day.

• The Scots Irish musical traditions helped give birth to what would become country music.

• On arriving in America the Scots Irish usually referred to themselves a 'Irish' – but began referring to themselves as Scotch Irish after the influx of poor Catholic immigrants forced to leave by the potato famine.

• The writer Kingsley Amis argued that the form "Scotch-Irish" should be used in English – rather than "Scots Irish" which he said did not reflect the etymology of the word. He said: "Nobody talks about butterscottish or hopscots… or Scottish pine."

• The largest numbers of migrating Ulster Scots travelled first to Pennsylvania. From there some went down to Virginia, Carolina and further South, others headed to Ohio, Indiana and the Midwest.

FROM ACROSS THE WATER..

A Bill Clinton

Clinton, American president from 1993 to 2001, is connected to the Scots Irish through his mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy. His mother's great great grandparents, Levi and Rachel Cassady, can be traced back to Roslea, County Fermanagh.

B Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton is said to be a descendant of the Scots Irish who originated in lowland Scotland and emigrated to Ulster in the 17th century. She spoke of her ancestry when she played her first ever gig in Belfast in 2007. "There is no reason why I haven't played Belfast in the past. But with my Scotch-Irish ancestry it's ridiculous that I haven't been here before. Obviously my roots have been a massive influence on my music"

C Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt was American president from 1901-09. His mother, Martha Bulloch, had Ulster Scots and Irish Huguenot ancestors who emigrated from Larne in May 1729.

D Ava Gardner

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina. She was the youngest of six children born to Mary and Jonas Gardner – tobacco farmers of Scotch-Irish descent. She spoke of her ancestry as "Scots Irish" in her autobiography.

E Edgar Allen Poe

The writer's father, David, came from an Scots Irish family, As did his mother Elizabeth Caimes. His great grandfather came from Kildallen, County Cavan in 1729 – their forebears came originally from Fenwick in Ayrshire.

F Neil Armstrong

The ancestors of Armstrong – the Apollo 11 commander and first man on the moon – came from Langholm, now in Dumfries and Galloway, then an important centre for the Border Reivers, and later settled in County Fermanagh. The astronaut was made a freeman of Langholm when he visited in 1972. In 2010 he made another visit to Scotland – he was spotted when he played a round of golf on Leven Links in Fife.

G Ulysses Grant

Grant, described as "the greatest general of his age" – became the 18th president of the United States. His ancestors came from Ballygawley, County Tyrone. Grant fought for the rights of slaves and Native Americans throughout his presidency.