Cooler assessments of Vance’s hillbilly story, as well as some angry ones by Appalachian natives, have questioned its content and import and his commitment to working class Americans. In all of this, Vance’s “Scots Irish” identity is often mentioned but rarely analyzed. Are many people in the Republic know that at least 17 of America’s 46 Presidents are of Scots Irish Protestant ancestry? Even so, the Scots Irish are a community that unionists could tap into.​”The Appalachian MythOver time many Scots Irish sloughed off any residual “Irish” identification, the better to assimilate. In this politics, the white working class are the “real Americans” and the most misunderstood victims of economic, political and cultural disenfranchisements.