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  • Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830
  • Tyler Blethen
Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830. Edited by Warren R. Hofstra. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. pp. xxvii, 263.)

What did—and does—it mean to be Scotch- (or Scots-) Irish? Despite the American obsession with ethnicity, Scotch-Irish identity has not been well defined. As Warren Hofstra makes clear in his introduction, this is not for want of interest or effort. For well over a century the Scotch-Irish have been written about in a flood of books that are still eagerly received in the marketplace. But most of those books reflect the scholarship of fifty to one hundred years ago, and many are written by people with partisan motives, such as modern-day conservatives and fundamentalist Christians promoting their own agendas. Consequently, they have reinforced and enlarged upon a century-old myth about the Scotch-Irish. That myth praises them for having brought with them to America, and preserved over time, vital traits that powerfully shaped the new American identity, such as independence, individualism, combativeness, stubbornness, egalitarianism, acquisitiveness, patriotism, religious fundamentalism, and conservatism. The Scotch-Irish are presented as national heroes who made America the exceptional society that it is today.

The essays in Ulster to America refute this hoary myth, especially its emphasis on the unchanging essentialism of Scotch-Irish identity. Instead, the evidence amassed by these present-day scholars suggests that the Scotch-Irish responded to the challenge of evolving historical forces by constantly reinventing themselves. As they interacted with people of other cultures, they modified, and sometimes abandoned, cultural traits that they had brought to America. [End Page 89]

Following David Miller’s masterly condensed description of the Old World origins of the Scotch-Irish, the remaining essays fall into two categories. Several develop analytical and theoretical constructs. Marianne Wokeck uses demographic modeling to explore how a distinctive migration pattern from Ulster to New Castle, Delaware, left a lasting Scotch-Irish imprint on one developing American community. Peter Gilmore and Kerby Miller employ class- conflict theory to examine how competition among various groups of Ulster Presbyterians for wealth and power combined with partisan national politics to give birth to a Scotch-Irish upper class. Robert Calhoon posits that the Scotch-Irish, swamped by the ethnic diversity of the backcountry, developed an acceptance of toleration and accommodation that engendered political moderation.

Other essays present detailed local histories of small backcountry communities. Richard MacMaster shows how the spread of commercial networks and the proliferation of Presbyterian churches brought order to Donegal Springs and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Warren Hofstra unravels the dense webs of family and community interdependency in Opequon, Virginia, and a consequent awareness that only peace made economic success possible. Katherine Brown and Kenneth Keller describe a growing acceptance in Virginia’s Irish Tract that governmental and cultural institutions provided the social harmony that enabled the pursuit of individual success. Michael Montgomery uses the Indian trader George Galphin to illustrate how the quest for individual wealth in Silver Bluff, South Carolina, morphed into a collective quest for security. Finally, Patrick Griffin’s examination of Kentucky’s bloody and racist war of extermination against the Indians explores a dark and horrifying facet of the myth of the Scotch-Irish, their reputation as “storm troopers for civilization” (212). What unites these essays is how Scotch-Irish migrants’ traits of independence and individualism were eventually overridden by the gradually perceived necessity of bringing order and stability to the backcountry.

Ulster to America presents new interpretations of the Scotch-Irish experience that challenge us to view them in different ways. Its predominant theme is a Scotch-Irish drive to create community in their new home that outweighed any earlier attachment to independence and individualism that they may have brought with them. Their eventual understanding that community, by securing order and stability, made possible individual accomplishment and success, was perhaps the greatest Scotch-Irish contribution to a developing American society. [End Page 90]

Tyler Blethen
Western Carolina University
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