```The founders of Appalachia came from the war-torn borderlands of northern Britain: lowland Scotland, the adjacent Marches of northern England, and the Scots-Irish-controlled north of Ireland. Their ancestors had weathered 800 yeras of nearly constant warfare, ... By the time America was being colonized, the borderlands were in ruins. ... Under such conditions, Borderlanders leanred to rely only on themselves and their extended families to defend home, hearth, and kin against intruders, be they foreign soldiers, Irish guerrilla fighters, or royal tax collectors. Living admist constant upheaval, many Borderlanders embraced a Calvinist religious tradition, Presbyterianism, that held that they were God's chosen people, members of a biblical nation sanctified in blood and watched over by a wrathful Old Testament diety. Suspicious of outside authority of any kind, the Borderlanders valued individual liberty and personal honor above all else, and were happy to take up arms to defend either. ... A century later, many Americans would value their willingness to hold down frontier lands against Native Americans, creating a protective buffer for more docile settlers near the coast.```
