From Alastair McIntyre's Electric Scotland, a long article by Raymond Campbell Paterson on the Scot-Irish, a term, it turns out, which is a peculiar invention of Americans:

[...] In the short period left before the outbreak of the American Revolution a further 30,000 Ulstermen left for the colonies, joining some 200,000 who had already made their homes there earlier in the century. The contemporary image of the Ulster Protestant is most commonly that of the Orangeman, with all of his exaggerated loyalty to Britain and the Crown. For the dispossessed of the 1770s the opposite was true: they had lost everything, and came to America with an intense hostility towards all things British.

For the original Quaker and Puritan settlers of the thirteen colonies, largely English in origin, the emigrants of Ulster, an increasingly common sight, were usually described as ‘Irish.’ To counter this misconception the newcomers adopted the older description of ‘Scots’. It was in this semantic exchange that a new breed took shape: they were the ‘Scots-Irish.’ For many years these people had lived on a frontier in Ireland, and it seemed natural for them to push on to a new frontier, where land was both plentiful and cheap, introducing a new urgency and dynamism into a rather complacent colonial society. Before long these ‘backwoodsmen’, distrustful of all authority and government, had established a hold on the western wilderness, fighting Indians and wolves in much the same way that they had once fought wolves and woodkern. [...]

With the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775 the Scots-Irish, in interesting contrast to many of their Scottish cousins, were among the most determined adherents of the rebel cause. Their frontier skills were particularly useful in destroying Burgoyne’s army in the Saratoga campaign; and George Washington was even moved to say that if the cause was lost everywhere else he would take a last stand among the Scots-Irish of his native Virginia. Serving in the British Army, Captain Johann Henricks, one of the much despised ‘Hessians’, wrote in frustration ‘Call it not an American rebellion, it is nothing more than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.’ It was their toughness, virility and sense of divine mission that was to help give shape to a new nation, supplying it with such diverse heroes as Davy Crocket and Andrew Jackson. They were indeed God’s frontiersmen, the real historical embodiment of the lost tribe of Israel.

Now the last sentence might be laying it on just a bit thick, but the article is informative nonetheless.

And of even more significance to those of us who love firearms, there is an article about Scotsman John Paris Lee.

Mr. Lee is the inventor of the Lee-Enfield rifle, in all of its variants probably the finest bolt-action military rifle ever made.

The Electric Scotland article also makes note of the Lee rifles which were sold to the U.S. Navy--these were the Model 1879 in .45-70 caliber, but there was a later model also designed by Lee--these were not British Enfields, but a completely different and unique design; the Lee Navy rifle of 1895 in 6mm caliber. (Here's another article reprinted from a news story from 1898.)

At the time, the U.S. Army was still using the Krag-Jorgensen rifle, but its .30-40 cartridge was showing up as being inferior to the Mauser cartridge used by Spanish forces in Cuba.

The Lee, issued to the Navy and Marine Corps, used a 6mm (.236 cal) cartridge which was hotter and shot flatter, the action of the rifle was of a unique straight-pull type, and unlike the Krag's side-opening loading door, it loaded from stripper clips through the top of the action. (That photo of the ammo is from a site which specializes in obsolete cartridges. The cartridges and clip are offered for sale at $250! The rifles themselves, when they can be found, usually sell for over a thousand.)

It saw service in Cuba, the Philipines and in the Boxer Rebellion, but was superseded in service by the Krag--according to this blurb by John Spangler (scroll down to Question #4422) it was undone by its fragility and the desire for ammunition and parts commonality among the services.

There was also resistance to the wider adoption of its cartridge from the more tradition-minded ordnance folks (the same types who resisted the move to the .30 caliber cartridge from the husky .45-70), and the not to mention the fact that a boatload of them went down with the USS Maine.

The shortcomings of the Krag were eventually done away with by the adoption of the M1903 Springfield, which loaded the stout .30-'06 cartridge (well, eventually, after the inferior .30-'03 cartridge was redone) into its magazine well using stripper clips, just like the Lee that preceded it.

The United States military would not again adopt a battle rifle cartridge smaller than .30 caliber until the .223 (5.56mm) caliber M-16 was adopted by the Air Force in 1964.
posted by Terry at 10:02:00 AM