'The Scots landed on the wharves at Philadelphia and Charleston with
certain convictions firmly fixed. They were enormously
self-disciplined, both by their Puritan ethic and the warlike
borderer's life.
'They had three public virtues: thrift, because they had always been
poor and Knox taught poverty was a disgrace; self-reliance,
because in the new Reformed world every man felt himself something of
an island; and industry, agreeing with St. Paul that who did not work
should not eat.
'They interpreted the New Testament mainly as a moral destruction of
aristocracy and beggardom. The quality of social mercy was not
strained, but the idea made Scotch-Irish uncomfortable.
'Calvin, through Knox, extolled material success and despised human
weakness. He had destroyed the old Christian concept of a station in
life and built a new cosmos in which men and women should have no
place, but functions. The act of being was thus meaningless; action
was everything, and the worth of any man could only be judged by what
he did.'