Donald Trump’s political hero, Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)—America’s most Northern Ireland-connected President—reveals a profound link to Ulster Scots values. Jackson’s anti-establishment, populist approach, shaped by Ulster Scots thought, mirrors Trump’s own political philosophy. This tradition, which champions the people’s authority over government, helped shape US democracy and continues to influence politics today, from the Boston Tea Party to the Trump White House.
Dr Dan Boucher explores the deep-rooted connection between Northern Ireland, Donald Trump, and the Ulster Scots political tradition.
While it is not unusual to have an American President who can trace their ancestry back to these islands, it is very unusual to have a President whose own mother was from the UK – the Isle of Lewis – and did not leave until she was 18.
This gives Scotland a special claim on President Trump’s affections. There are, however, several reasons why Northern Ireland also has a particular connection with the Trump Whitehouse which should not be overlooked.
One of these points of connection arises from the fact that President Trump regards Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States, as his political hero.
Jackson’s picture was hung in the Oval Office during Trump’s first term, and he visited the Hermitage, Jackson’s home on the 250th anniversary of his birth to give an impassioned speech in his honour and lay a wreath.
Today Jackson is back in pride of place on the President’s left as he sits at the Resolute desk.
While there up to 20 Presidents who can claim Northern Ireland ancestry, the one with by far the greatest connection is Jackson. Indeed, Jackson’s connection is so significant that it came close to disqualifying him from the Presidency. He was the youngest of three brothers with a three year gap between the birth of the first and second and a two year gap between the birth of the second and third. Had he been born first or second, Jackson would have been born in Northern Ireland and thus ineligible for the top job. However, his parents left Carrickfergus in the year of the birth of their second son, so that their third was born in what were then the American colonies. Thus, although Jackson was brought up in America, there is a very real sense in which he was also brought up in a Northern Ireland, Ulster Scots home.
The reason why Jackson is so important to Trump is not hard to see.
Jackson’s success was defined around being an anti-establishment, outsider, who took on the Washington elites through the ballot box and won. This is exactly the approach of Donald Trump. The importance of this connection for Northern Ireland, however, is not simply that the President, who in some senses modelled a pattern in the 1820s that is working for Trump in the 2020s, happened to have parents who came from Northern Ireland. It is much more importantly that Jackson’s approach was in some key respects informed by the Ulster Scots political tradition which is arguably more important in the United States today than at any point during the last two hundred years.
Central to Ulster Scots political philosophy is a distinct approach to ‘the people’ that rather than being made by government (in the tradition of continental social contract theory), exists in some senses apart from it, calling politicians in the executive to account. It is in rising to this accountability challenge that the Ulster Scots tradition did so much to shape representative democracy in America, the vehicle for representing ‘the people’. In 1773 it was this that inspired the Ulster Scots leaders of the Boston Tea Party to shout ‘no taxation without representation.’ And in the 1820s it was this that Jackson built upon, becoming the first President to appeal directly to the nation, inaugurating what became known as ‘Jacksonian Democracy’, resulting in full universal white male suffrage (after his death) by 1856.
A scholar who has done much to highlight the importance of Jackson to American politics today is Walter Russell Mead. Mead argues that Jackson, and one other influential early President, Thomas Jefferson, define the two poles of the American political tradition today. While Jeffersonian America engages with a more cerebral aspect of the American political tradition, where America constitutes a series of ideas and values, Jacksonian America gives expression to a more visceral expression of the American people – upon which the US political tradition also depends – as a felt community of belonging. It is completely impossible to understand Jacksonian America, and the Trump Whitehouse apart from the Ulster Scot commitment to ‘the people’.
In the first instance, it is bound up in US democratic conceptions of political legitimacy which only work in the context of a strong sense of shared identity, without which finding oneself in the minority becomes a completely alienating experience.
In the second instance, it fosters a strong sense of belonging that brings a deep loyalty, not just to the living, but also the dead, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in time of war.
The fruit of the Ulster Scot conception of ‘the people’ is important for us today, not simply because of the shared cultural framework it provides with the Trump Whitehouse, but also for the purposes of reminding Northern Ireland of our own political traditions. The loyalty point is so extraordinarily evident. The commitment of the people of Northern Ireland to honour the memory of those who gave their lives over 100 years ago in the battle of the Somme is exceptional. It also confronts us with the strength of our democratic conception of legitimacy and the fact that if one was to try to disenfranchise a people, as the European Union has sought to disenfranchise us, Northern Ireland is the last place one would choose for this purpose.
Of course, Jackson’s application of the Ulster Scots conception of ‘the people’ was far from perfect, but that should only inspire our study of the framers of Ulster Scots political thought, like Samuel Rutherford, in order to better understand and apply ‘the people’ in the future.
This article was first published on 31st January 2025 by the Belfast Newsletter
Main Image: President Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead. Link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/. Copyright: Whitehouse (made available to news organisations for republishing).
