Tartan Day and Its True Meaning

In the spirit of virtual Tartan Day, we present The True Meaning of Tartan Day, written by John King Bellassai. We hope you find his reflections as interesting as we did! Thank you, John, for allowing us to share this article with our community.

Tartan Day and Its True Meaning

By John King Bellassai* is President of the Council of Scottish Clans and Associations (COSCA) and Vice President of the National Capital Tartan Day Committee.

Soon, we American Scots will be celebrating Tartan Day again, complete with all of the usual festivities. And, as always, our Scottish cousins will react to our festivities with a mix of bewilderment and amusement. They are, after all, Scots living in Scotland, so few of them understand what the fuss is about. However, Tartan Day is an American holiday that is not celebrated in Scotland. So it is up to the American Scots to decide what it is all about and how it should be celebrated.

Nonetheless, many Americans appear to have missed the point of the Tartan Day holiday. Tartan Day was never intended to be about parades and bagpipes, as most American Scots seem to think it is—though everyone enjoys the sound of the pipes and any excuse for a parade is welcome. Nor was Tartan Day intended to be just another opportunity for native Scots to come over here and market their products and services—as both the Scottish Government and the Scottish business community always want to approach it, even calling it "Scotland Week"—which completely misses the point and irritates us purists to no end. So, to cut through all of this clutter, it seems appropriate to write a few lines about the true meaning of Tartan Day—for the benefit of both Scottish and American readers.

The statue of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, stands at the site of the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) in which Scotland defeated the English armies before signing the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.

Tartan Day, like Christmas in the modern era, has become engulfed in glitz and glamour over the last 20 years or so in the United States, which is unfortunate in many ways because it obscures the holiday's primarily educational purpose, which was always intended to be all about understanding and celebrating the many contributions made by Scots and Scottish-Americans to the founding and building of the United States.  That is what the original resolution establishing the holiday, passed by the United States Senate in May 1998, clearly states.  And a nearly identical resolution passed by the United States House of Representatives in May 2005 states the same thing.  And there's a lot for Scots and Scottish-Americans to appreciate and celebrate.

Both congressional resolutions acknowledge "the monumental achievements and invaluable contributions" made by Scottish immigrants and Americans of Scottish descent to the nation's founding—far outweighing their numbers in the general population. It is estimated that less than 7% of the free population of the American colonies on the eve of the Revolution were Scots or Scots' descendants, but as a group, they played an outsized role in all of the events of the time: Both companion bills, Senate Resolution 155 and House Resolution 41, state that nearly half of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 were of Scottish descent, as were the Governors of nine of the original thirteen states, and that these and other Scottish-Americans helped shape the United States in its formative years and guide it through its most difficult times.

American Declaration of Independence, signature detail

Who exactly were these people? What was it about their contributions that made us remember and honor them to this day? Most readers are familiar with the most prominent of these—men such as James Monroe of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York. Monroe, a third-generation Scottish-American, became the fourth President of the United States. (Monroe's paternal great grandfather emigrated from Scotland to Virginia around 1660 and was born there. The son of a prosperous planter, Monroe attended the College of William and Mary and studied law under Thomas Jefferson, whose protégé he was. James Monroe served as Governor of Virginia and later as American Ambassador to France, where he assisted in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. He was easily reelected as President of the United States in 1820 after winning 80 percent of the popular vote in 1816.

Alexander Hamilton arrived in America in 1772 as an immigrant from the British West Indies' Nevis. Hamilton, the illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant, served as General Washington's aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War before co-authoring the Federalist Papers. He founded the Federalist Party and served as America's first Secretary of the Treasury. In many ways, he shaped the modern American nation-state. (Though we claim to be a nation founded on Jeffersonian principles, we have evolved much closer to Hamilton's vision for America—a militarily and economically strong, industrialized nation made up primarily of large cities, rather than small towns and yeoman farmers.)

Alonzo Chappel, Hamilton's First Meeting with George Washington (1856). Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Lexington, Massachusetts.

Other Scottish-Americans, less well-known in history but equally influential, exemplify the types of figures Tartan Day was intended to commemorate and honor. Let us concentrate on three of these—all Scottish immigrants to America—who each had a significant influence on the other Founders and helped shape the American Declaration of Independence. They all represent Scottish ethics and values, which are important aspects of our shared cultural and political heritage. These included William Small, who emigrated from Aberdeen to Virginia in 1758, James Wilson, who emigrated from Fife to Pennsylvania in 1765, and the Rev. John Witherspoon, who moved from East Lothian to New Jersey in 1768.

Small graduated from Mariscal College in Aberdeen and went on to become Professor of Natural Philosophy at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he taught and mentored the young Thomas Jefferson. In his autobiography, Jefferson credited Small with shaping his thinking on human rights with ideas derived not from London or Paris, but from Aberdeen and Edinburgh, the Scottish Enlightenment's epicenters.

Wilson, also known as "James of Caledonia" in America, served as a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress. James Wilson, like William Small, was well-versed in the works of the Scottish Enlightenment. George Washington, in his memoirs, praised Wilson's abilities and temperament. Wilson was one of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1789. He was educated at St. Andrews and later taught at the College of Philadelphia before practicing law in the United States. He made significant contributions to the constitutional debates of the 1780s, which resulted in the formulation of the modern American tri-partite political system, which includes co-equal executive, legislative, and judicial branches as enshrined in the United States Constitution. Wilson was the primary thinker who developed the concept of the US Supreme Court. And it was he who persuaded Congress to explicitly state that all powers of government, any government, are ultimately derived from the people—a uniquely Scottish concept.

A statue of John Witherspoon on the Princeton University campus.

The Rev. John Witherspoon, sixth President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, was by far the most well-known of these three Scots. Witherspoon was educated at the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and was ordained a minister in the Church of Scotland in 1745. He only emigrated to America after being actively encouraged to do so by Benjamin Rush, who came to Paisley specifically to recruit him on behalf of the college. During his 25-year tenure, Witherspoon transformed the small Presbyterian college, founded primarily to train clergymen, into America's preeminent university. Witherspoon, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and the only clergyman among them, actively served on over 100 committees and was the most outspoken advocate for full political separation from Britain. He not only signed the Declaration of Independence, but he also educated many of the country's first political leaders in the decade leading up to it.

Throughout his academic career, Witherspoon was an eloquent and outspoken supporter of the Common Sense Philosophy, as advocated by Scottish Enlightenment scholars Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Lord Kames, and others, which he taught at Princeton. His students included 12 other members of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence, as well as one American President (James Madison), one American Vice President (Aaron Burr), 37 judges (three of whom later became Supreme Court justices), 28 senators, and 49 congressmen.

President John Adams once stated of Witherspoon, "I know of no character, alive or dead, who has done more real good for America." A bronze statue of Witherspoon by Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddardt stands on the Princeton University campus, while an identical twin stands outside the University of the West of Scotland in Paisley. Another is in downtown Washington, DC, near the busy intersection of Connecticut Avenue and 18th Street, NW.

* John King Bellassai is the President of the Council of Scottish Clans and Associations (COSCA) and Vice President of the National Capital Tartan Day Committee. (His maternal grandfather, John King, emigrated from Killearn, Stirlingshire, to America in 1910.

By: ScotsTee