Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 by Peter E. Gilmore (review)

In this short but excellent and deeply researched book, Peter E. Gilmore, a historian at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, examines two intimately-related developments. First is the immigration and settlement in western Pennsylvania of Irish Presbyterians, often called the Scots Irish, who came primarily from Ulster (Ireland's northern province) in the fifty years or so after the American Revolution. Second is the growth of the Presbyterian churches, which these immigrants and their descendants planted and nurtured in those districts, in and around Pittsburgh, where they settled so heavily.

Whereas older studies of Scots Irish immigration and of early American Presbyterianism often conclude in 1776, Gilmore emphasizes that far more Ulster immigrants came to the New World in the half-century following the American Revolution than before, and he argues persuasively that their contributions to the development of Presbyterianism in the United States were at least as important as those of their predecessors, who led the First Great Awakening of the 1730s-40s.

Gilmore's book is both a fine example of immigration/ethnic history and an important study of American religious history. One facet of his principal thesis is that Presbyterianism, despite (or even because of) its several competing forms, was the most important aspect of Scots-Irish identity, both in Ulster and in western Pennsylvania. Conversely, Gilmore contends that it is impossible to understand American Presbyterianism, especially in its western Pennsylvania crucible, without appreciating its inextricable links and deep indebtedness to the religious beliefs and practices that were transplanted from the North of Ireland.

Yet, Gilmore shows that this Irish-American Presbyterian community was by no means monolithic. Indeed, diversity and conflict were among its essential characteristics. For example, there were inevitable tensions between, on the one hand, the older (often pre-revolutionary) Ulster Presbyterian immigrants and especially their American-born descendants, and, on the other hand, the more recent immigrants from the North of Ireland who flocked to the new American republic after the Revolution.

Those tensions reflected not only generational differences but also conflicts rooted in class, culture, and politics. Many of the newcomers, especially those who had been poor in Ulster, had difficulty establishing themselves on farms in an increasingly stratified western Pennsylvania society. Second, a large proportion of the new immigrants adhered to the more rigid and traditional varieties of Ulster Presbyterianism, the Seceder and Covenanter churches, which promoted their retention of imported customs and outlooks and hence resistance to assimilation and acculturation.

Third, many recent immigrants had been radicalized in Ulster by the Patriot movement of the 1770s-80s, the French Revolution of 1789, the writings of Tom Paine, and, most important, by the Society of United Irishmen (established in Belfast in 1791). In 1797-98 the ruthless suppression of the United Irishmen, by Crown forces and Irish loyalists, spurred a flood of immigrants from Ulster to western Pennsylvania, where their democratic ideals allied them with the Jeffersonian Republicans but brought them into sharp conflict with earliersettled and wealthier Presbyterians, especially the local clergy, most of whom were rabid Federalists.

Thus, the fervent revivals, which in the 1790s and early 1800s characterized many Presbyterian communities in frontier Pennsylvania and adjacent areas, can be viewed, at least in part, as a clerically engineered counter-revolution against the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) and the Democratic-Republican Party, as well as the alleged threats of "foreign" radicalism and infidelity. Interestingly, the frontier churches that were most resistant to both revivalism and Federalism were those whose adherents were recent Ulster immigrants; often the most traditional in religion were the most radical in politics.

As Gilmore shows, however, in the early 1800s the rise in western Pennsylvania of market capitalism, centered on Pittsburgh, eventually triumphed over ethnic loyalties, religious traditionalism, and political radicalism. To be sure, examples of resistance remained, especially among the Seceders and Covenanters. Thus, the still-godly tried to protect the Sabbath against Sunday mail-delivery and the...