This was Indian frontier and full of dangers. Accustomed as they soon became to stealthy sharpshooting and bloody scalpings, the implacable nature of the war the Scotch-Irish waged against the Red Man is understandable if not always excusable.
Forever seeking wider horizons and new clearing sites, the great mass of adopted sons of Erin trended south into the Cumberland and Shenandoah valleys and on into North Carolina. From there, during and after the Revolution, they turned their faces to the West, into Tennessee and Kentucky and thence to the Ozarks of Southern Missouri and Northwest Arkansas.
Part of their tide spilled over into the highlands of Georgia and Alabama. They have always been inherently mountain men. Their ancestral "Lowlands" of Scotland were rolling hills, low only by contrast with the Trossachs and other high ranges in the north of Scotland. Stout fighters to establish the nation, the Scotch-Irish proved equally valiant in preserving it from dissolution 85 years later. In the Civil War they were predominantly loyal to the Union wherever they lived.
Horace Kephart "Our Southern Highlanders" says that the Appalachian mountain area sent , riflemen into the Union armies. John Fox, Jr. These were the men who saved Kentucky from joining the South, "seceded from secession" by splitting off the western mountain counties of Viriginia into a free state, and in cooperation with the German element in St.
Louis, held Missouri for the old flag. They formed a united and unconquerable Federal island in East Tennessee. They were the main Union strength in Western Maryland.
John Fiske relates an incident in his "Mississippi Valley in the Civil War" illustrative of the loyalty of these "Yankees of the South. When we remember that the rural South was more warlike than the industrial North, and that for more than two years the war in the East, with Confederate generalship of a high order, went uniformly against the Union, it seems that these highlanders in the Union Army, together with the westerners, decided the issue in the end.
The fighting qualities and iron resolution displayed in the Revolution and the Civil War came of a deeply cherished tradition brought over from Ulster. Twice after the plantation the Ulsterites had, with belated assistance for England, repelled fierce assaults from the southern Irish bent on expelling them from the island.
In the bloody uprising of , at least Scotch and English civilians were slaughtered in a no-quarter attempt at annihilating the Protestants. Then Cromwell went over from England with an army of his veteran Roundheads and put down the insurrection with equal barbarity. The Homeric epic of that war was the long siege of Londonderry, described by Macaulay as "the most memorable siege in the annals of the British Isles.
Closely invested in this fortress by the vastly superior. When the besieged were at their very last extremity, a squadron of English ships finally broke a blockading boom into the harbor to bring food and raise the siege. Clark wore a patch over his right eye to cover an unhealed wound received in one of the Londonderry sallies. When the old man died in , forty-seven years after this memorable event, in compliance with a deathbed request his body was borne to the grave by survivors of the Londonderry siege.
We have seen in this sketchy account of the Scotch-Irish in war and colonization one marked aspect of their character. But men ho will fight stoutly in defense of their homes or for an idea are not rare.
We can find accounts of such in the annals of all ages and nearly all peoples. What else distinguished the Scotch-Irish? What manner of men were they in other respects? Probably their second most marked trait was religious fervor. They were Puritans in the Scotch Covenanter sense. They believed passionately in religious freedom for themselves, even though like other groups who settled in America, they were not always willing to accord the same freedom to others.
It was their fortune in the lands of their fathers to be dissenters who paid a price for adherence to their faith. Vance Randolph has described a bred-in-the-bone Ozarker as one who "always drinked his whiskey reverend and taken his quinine the same way.
Even today his descendants prefer to take their religion straight. And if there is any quinine to be imbibed he is not unwilling to take it the same way.
We hear much about church "discipline," and the word is used here in quotes, by design. Among the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of two centuries or more ago, no quotes were necessary in using the word.
A Reverend John Livingston thus describes church discipline in 17th century Ulster:. We the session met every week and such as fell into notorius public scandal we desired to come before us. Such as came were dealt with, both in public and private, to confess their scandal in the presence of the congregation at the Saturday sermon before Communion, which was celebrated twice a year.
Such as after dealing would not come before us, or coming would not be convinced to acknowledge their fault before the congregation, their names, scandals and impenitency were read out before the congregation, and they were debarred from the Communion. The Scotch-Irish, however, are firmly lodged in the established mental map of American ethnology and the challenge to replace this terminology remains unfulfilled.
The last two decades have seen considerable historical revision in relation to eighteenth century Ireland and the stream of emigration which emanated from it.
The growing awareness of the more heterogeneous make-up of the Irish diaspora and the current debate about Ulster-Scots culture and identity in Northern Ireland, perhaps converge to make this an apposite juncture for a review. As an American construct, the exact nature of the migrant fusion between Scottish and Irish influences has often been prone to a degree of haziness.
The profusion of popular historical literature on the far side of the Atlantic has generally served to reduce visibility further. The establishment of a connection between those leaving the northern half of Ireland for colonial America in the early eighteenth century and British settlers in Ireland in the previous century has proved problematic. Even in Ulster, where Presbyterians from the Scottish lowlands settled in greatest numbers, there was substantial settlement by those from England and Wales.
That Presbyterians, predominantly of Scottish origin, formed the largest element within Ulster emigration to colonial America is not disputed but Anglicans and Quakers of English stock also left.
Kerby Miller has estimated that 30 per cent of those leaving Ulster for colonial America were Protestant but not Presbyterian. Furthermore, the notion of complete ethnic and religious separation and segregation in the century before large-scale emigration commenced around , is untenable. This point was acknowledged a generation ago.
Many planters became Catholics and many natives became Protestants. The majority of those taking ship from ports such as Belfast, Derry or Newry in the early part of the eighteenth century were not, by and large, leaving a country where their families had been resident for over a century.
Apart from the fact that there was significant, if spasmodic, return migration to Scotland during the seventeenth century, the greatest volume of Scots came to Ireland during the second half of the century. A contemporary observer reported the influx of 50, Scots in the s. Evidence suggests that those who came after and as a response to the severest of famines in Scotland were significantly poorer than previous Scots settlers.
Another feature, which has bedevilled much of what has been written about those described as the Scotch-Irish, is the absence of historical context and little account of change over time. The impression of almost seamless continuity from one generation to another is quite pervasive in the history that was fashioned a century ago and indeed remains potent in many popular histories of our own time. Hot Press. Yet, convicted border reivers were a small minority of those who settled in the northern half of Ireland during the early seventeenth century.
Over a century later when the first large-scale emigration from Ulster got under way the society they left was far removed from a lawless frontier zone.
Furthermore the context of settlement in the New World was not homogeneous and was arguably much more influential in shaping patterns of settler behaviour than distant ancestral experience. He quotes the following passage:. And so they came…a strong willed people who forged their homes out of this region and brought their love and beauty with them. The clear emphasis in both accounts is on the continuity of traits and traditions almost in isolation from geographical context or historical change.
The sparseness of material artefacts relating to the migration and settlement of emigrants from Ulster to North America during the eighteenth century has also played some part in shaping this emphasis on what one might call persistent folkways. The difficulty of demonstrating palpable change over time through the evolution of everyday objects is substantial and has placed a heavier burden on non-material culture in the exploration of Scots-Irish heritage.
Given the fact that those who left Ulster for colonial America were not on the whole materially rich, the study of their music, song, lore, leisure pursuits, etc. It is essential, however, that the methodologies employed in this endeavour are thorough and not ultimately ahistorical. The Irish eighteenth century is viewed very differently today than was the case a generation ago. The appreciation of the rapid commercialisation of society, particularly in Ulster, has obvious implications for the interpretation of Ulster emigration to colonial America.
The exodus of large numbers of Presbyterians from Ulster had more to do with the regime of rents, leases and harvests than it had with persecution by Anglican church and state. There is also a growing recognition of change over time. The traditional landmark date employed to differentiate early modern from modern emigration was , the commencement of the American Revolution which effectively put America off limits for the following six years.
And they kept moving. To Kentucky. To Tennessee. To Missouri. And, eventually into Texas. During their continual migration, their formal religious ties dissolved into the individualistic, churchless American milieu of the early s, and many would be born-again as Baptists or converted by the Methodist itinerant preachers of the frontier.
These are the Scotch-Irish whose numbers get mixed up with ambiguous references to "British" colonists, and "Irish" ancestors, and "Anglo-American" settlers. Later, especially when ranching came to define Texas in the late s, eager and ambitious Scots came directly from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to raise cattle and build railroads — and make money. The U. Census, 5. Another 5. This was in a four-region division of South-Northeast-Midwest-West.
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