Letter: Divide and rule

In each of his letters (26 and 28 March), Bill McLean misses my original point entirely. All I did was state the surely indisputable fact that almost all successful nations have populations with diverse political views and backgrounds; the United States was one and there are many others.

There is even a north-south divide within England, and thus the nationalist claim that England and Scotland could not be united because of political differences was absurd.

In truth, a more accurate American analogy to the present state of affairs in Scotland would surely be the southern states’ attempts to break the union in the 1860s and the resultant American Civil War.

Instead of it being “Scotland’s oil” it could then have been paraphrased as the “South’s slaves”.

Alexander McKay

New Cut Rigg

Edinburgh

I hope the following extracts from James E Johnson’s The Scots and Scotch-Irish in America will prove helpful to those who, like me, are not knowledgeable enough to take part in the discourse on the American Civil War. I am aware that Scots and Scotch/Irish (AKA Ulster/Scots) played a hugely disproportionate role in what transpired. Seven out of the 56 “signers” of the Declaration of Independence were Scots or Scotch-Irish.

Nine of the first governors of the 13 newly created states were Scots or Scotch/Irish. These figures suggest they were not too kindly disposed to British/English rule and wanted independence. True, a great many remained loyal to the Crown, including Flora Macdonald and her husband, who later returned to Scotland.

However, one of the more stirring slogans of this era, and learned even today by Americans, is Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death.” His father came from Aberdeen.

George Cooper

Westgate

Leslie, Fife