TTIE SUNDAY OREGOXIAN. PORTLAND. SEPTEMBER 29, 1912. Many Executives, From Jackson to McKinley, Came From Sturdy Race of Ulster. Another of These Scotch Irishmen Will Go to White House if Woodrow Wilson Is Elected. Kir s' & .Ire' m as mm :-W.-i;L-- I .: 1 T dwellers in the South of Ireland who love him not at all. he Is known as the black Northerner, while the English. . who hare ruled Terr unjustly oyer his destiny lor aeveral hundreds ot years, call him the Ulstennan; but we of America, who call him the Scotch-Irishman, hold him In such great esteem that we hare formed the habit of elect ing; him. every few years. President of these United States. We began with Andrew Jackson, then came Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Arthur and Mc Kinley, all of Ulster stock, while Grant, Benjamin Harrison and Cleveland In herited from their mothers a strain of Scotch-Irish blood; and Woodrow Wil son, our very latest candidate for Presidential honors. Is of that same hardy Presbyterian race of Ulster. It la a far cry from the native Irish ruler. Con O'Neill, who governed with what little power the English left him a part of County Down. In the year 160J, to Woodrow Wilson, Democratic candidate for President of the United States In 1911; but It Is Just as well to hark back to the convivial old chief tain and to a certain historic banquet he gave to some of his relatives, for thereby hangs the tale of the first in vasion of Ireland by the Scotch Low landers. The O'Neill was entertaining, and In the course, of the banquet its principal Ingredient gave out. where upon Con sent servants Into the Eng lish settlement to get a supply of wine ordered from Spain. The English sol diers refused to give up the wine until a tax should be paid upon it. Now Con had not been informed of the tax. so he commanded his servants to have at the soldiers. As a result, one soldier was killed, and the English commander, accusing Con. In the offhand way that has always distinguished British gov ernment of the Irish, of 'levying war against the Queen," condemned him to be hanged and confined him In Car lickfergus Castle. Con connived with some Scotch friends, who arranged a melodramatio escape for him and final ly obtained his pardon from the Eng lish ruler for the price of two-thirds of his estate. Hear Inning of Scotch Plantation. These Scottish friends then brought over many Scotch Lowlanders, whom they "planted" on their newly acquired estates so plentifully that they spread over the most of County Down. So there came to be Scotchmen In that part of Ireland whence Woodrow Wil son's family comes. County Antrim, to the north, had already many. Scotch men, wild, warlike men, from the Islands and the coast, who had given the British much trouble until about this time, when their leader threw Is bis lot with th English government and encouraged peaceful Scotch and Englishmen to settle and cultivate the lands. Then the two other powerful Irish -chieftains of the North were com pelled by the English to flee for their lives, and after that sorrowful "Flight of the Earls" their lands were confis cated to the Crown. So that the re maining conntles of that northern part of Ireland, known as Ulster, were open to further "plantation." Then came the "Great Plantation of Ulster," the work of James the First. English settlers who had been planted in Ireland hith erto had become more Irish than the Irish themselves; Scotchmen from the coast were too warlike; James would have Lowland Scots, peace-loving Pro testants from "the inward parts of Scotland." It was part of the plan that the natives should vanish before them as the Indians have since vanished In America. The peaceable Scots came. Their numbers were swelled by the Covenanters, persecuted In Scotland, and by another plantation under the powerful CromwelL So it came about that practically the whole of Northern Ireland had a population of Scotch Presbyterians. They were thrifty, industrious, serious-minded people. They prospered, they raised cattle, wove cloth, tilled the soil, planted potatoes lately Introduced from America spread over the prov ince and mingled but little with the native Roman Catholic Irish. It seemed that they were to possess the land. . Trouble Befalls Scotamesu Trouble, however, fell thick and fast a, hails tacts upon .the jjewli -settled n L li m 4 I W'i iff 3 ;.4si' Scotsmen. The fortune of Ireland has gona up and down, from bad to worse, from worse to bad (never rising to good), like mercury In a thermometer, according: to the whims of the rulers of the British Isles. The native Irish have had always the worst of It, but the transplanted Lowlanders, separated from their old home, surrounded by men of a different religion who knew them as usurpers, had troubles enough of their own to make of them prac tlcally a new race. They found them selves then, and are to this day, be tween the devil and the deep sea. The English, having placed them there, turned a deaf ear to their complaints. Tou have only to read the daily papers now to realize that the deaf ear Is still turned toward them, an ear too deaf to hear even with the aid of a speaking trumpet. The English passed laws forbidding them to export cattle from their vast grazing lands; English commercial Jealousy utterly crushed the thriving manufacture of woolen materials; there were ruinous land wars, rents were raised, tenants evict ed, and the Presbyterians were perse cuted by misguided bishops of the Irish Episcopal Church who caused their ministers to be Imprisoned and exiled. Rebellions followed and devastating famines. Migration to America. Thoroughly disheartened the people, hitherto loyal subjects, saw that they would never obtain In Ireland the lib erty they and their fathers had fought and worked for. The eighteenth cen tury saw shipload after shipload of Ulster folk sail away to America to try their fortunes in a new land. Between 1731 and 1768 one-third of the Prot estant population of Ireland emigrated, and from 1771 to 1773 10,000 weavers left. So It happens that we owe our Presidents of Ulster blood, as we do our National Independence, to British misrule. Today in Belfast they will tell you: "It was Ulster men who won your Revolution for you; make no mis take about that." However that may be. It Is certain that a strong sense of wrong flamed In the breasts of the Ulster emigrants and their descendants. At the time of the Revolution there were 600 Scotch-Irish settlements whose members stood almost to a man against British oppression. And here we come to our first Ulster President. It is high time for a successful man to emerge from that virile race. Andrew Jackson's father and mother came from Ulster, sailing from their home In Carrickfergus In 1765. Car rlckfergus Is one of the most ancient towns In the North of Ireland. Its historic castle, built by an early Nor man adventurer, was long a strong hold of the English and the scene of several sieges. Jackson's father was a poor Protestant tenant evicted dur ing the land war of 1760; his mother Is said to have been a weaver, and the two of them must have witnessed some of the many hangings that took place In the Gallows' Green of the town. Soon after they settled In America the fu ture President was born, and we hear of him first at the battle of Hanging Rock, where as a mere lad he was fired to heroic fighting. When, in 1S15. he won the battle of New Orleans, "ev ery blow of his arm had double force." Opposed to him were Wellington's sea soned troops, fresh from victories In Europe; their leader was Packenham, a man from Jackson's parents' own horn county of Antrim, a member sax 21 tv vr . 9 5. ft the landlord class which had driven them "by means of force and fraud and foul dealing" so runs the account to seek a livelihood in America. Small wonder that Jackson, most patriotic of American citizens, swore at the com ing of the British troops: "By the Eternal! they must have no rest on our soil!" Several Presidents Scotch-Irish. Polk was descended from Robert Pollock, who came to America from the County of Londonderry in 1690. It is an Interesting date, for only a year before that time the great siege of Londonderry took place. The Protest ants held the city for William of Orange against the Catholic Irish for James II. One hundred and five days the siege lasted, and those within the walls died by the hundreds of disease and famine, eating at the last scraps of hides, raw grain, and the very rata in the cellars. Yet they did not sur render. Today you may see in the cathedral yard the graves of those who died. "They shall hunger no more," the inscription reads. Buchanan's father came from ' the County of Donegal in 1783. Andrew Johnson was the grandson of an An drew Johnson who left Ulster about 17S0. Benjamin Harrison's mother was the daughter of a McDowell, who came from Ulster" in 1718. Grant's great grandfather was born in the north of Ireland In 1738 and emigrated to Amer ica. Cleveland's grandfather was a North of Ireland man, presumably of Scottish descent. Gavin MacArthur Arthur's grandfather, was a Presby terian minister at Ballymena in County Autrun. No doubt he saw the batle which took place there in 1798 between the yeomanry and the United Irishmen, as the rebels of that day were called. ' A McKinley Haniced "s Rebel. McKinley was of Ulster stock. The McKinley home still stands, a staunch little farm house there In the north, In County Antrim near the town of Bally money. It Is perhaps the only ances tral home still preserved abroad of any President except Washington, and Washington's ancestral home is a stately English manor-house, very dif ferent from the humble Irish farm house. The farm lies In the midst of the lovely Irish country the loveliest In habited country in all the world on the road from Ballymoney to Dervock between the Garry bow and the Bush River. How far away these names sound from Canton, Ohio, or the White House in Washington. The house was burned once', in 1788, for the McKinley who lived there then was suspected of aiding the United Irishmen. Suspicion and conviction were one and the same thing in those days in Ireland, and the respectable , Presbyterian farmer wn humeed In Coleralne. His wife burled the body In the family burial ground, and over It placed a monument . reading: 'Hem lveth the remains or r rancia McKinley, who departed this life In Coleralne the the 7th of July, 1798. aged 42 years." William Jttciiiniey was ocsuii-"i from an uncle of this unfortunate man. The McKinleys all left the place In 1838 and it Is known now as on- agher's farm. And so we came again no xne po- hi President Woodrow Wilson, whose Scotch-Irish Presbyterian min ister father came of a family in coun- - ty Dawn. Today in JBeuast, tne cmei raw m Ulster, you will find the biggest manu factures of whisky, or Tope, oi linen, and of tobacco, and the biggest ship yards In the world, all built up by the . untiring Industry of the Scotch-Irish. You will find a profound respect for olM learnlnz- and a most amazing number of churches, so many that the city fairly bristles with spires. But I thlnK It is only in America , hut the Ulsterman has really come to his own. Here Romanism and home rule- and English unfairness are mere words of empty meaning: here he can be something other than prosperous manufacturer or minister of the gos nel according to John Knox; here his sternness Is Boftened;: with civil and i-aiio-ioua liberty In a country that ne can call his own, all that Is best in him comes to the fore, and that best Is so good that we never tire of honoring him with the highest position In the land. ANNIE LAUKA Ml i.i. nin.