Excerpts reprinted from an essay written by Mary Black

Scottish immigrants settled in Northern Ireland early in the Fifteenth Century but at the outset of the War of Three Kingdoms (1641-53) the Irish Catholic gentry slaughtered thousands of the Scots. Retaliation soon followed and a strong enmity developed between the native Irish and the Scotch interlopers. As the English Civil War coincided with the conflict in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell followed the Scots who had sworn a Covenant to support the Presbyterian Kirk and English Parliament and ruthlessly crushed both sides, conquering all of Ireland in the 1650s.

Since the Anglican prelates could not, or would not, co-exist in Britain with either the Roman Catholics or the Presbyterians; King James desperately sought a solution. He decided to entice a large portion of the rural Scottish Lowlanders to settle in Northern Ireland through large land grants. He calculated that: (1) the Scottish lords would be grateful for his largesse; (2) he would benefit by creating a protestant state in Ireland; and (3) remove some of the most adamant Presbyterian influence from Scotland. Fifty-five Lowlanders were originally granted 81,000 acres in what became know as the Ulster Plantation. By the end of the seventeenth century the number of Scots who had moved to Northern Ireland had surpassed 100,000, while English settlers there were less than half of that.

For much of the Seventeenth Century the Scotch Presbyterians in Ireland fulfilled the role that James had envisioned and held the Irish Catholics at bay. The Presbyterians of Ulster fought fiercely for King William at Londonderry and helped him prevail in the final battle near Dublin in1690. Unfortunately their efforts were not rewarded. In 1704 the English Parliament passed the Test Act denying Presbyterians the right to hold important civil or religious positions in any British territory. Ulster’s Presbyterians initiated a campaign to undo these new civil disabilities by printing pamphlets decrying the discrimination as “an infringement of freeborn Britons.” Their efforts were fruitless but those who migrated to America would remember their battle cry.

It was now clear that wealthier Anglicans would be in control of Northern Ireland and Presbyterians would occupy a rung just above the Catholics. The failure of the British government to respect the status of the Presbyterian Church weakened its patronage and thus its authority over its parishioners. For the Presbyterians, Ulster was turning out to be a poor refuge from religious controversy, so many began to look elsewhere. At the same time America was acquiring a reputation as a place that permitted freedom of religious thought.

In addition to religious restrictions, Parliament always tipped the scale of economic advantage toward England. The Staple Act of 1663, for example, limited the direct exportation from Ireland to the colonies of anything but indentured servants, horses and provisions. Parliament then limited the importation of colonial goods into Ulster and the 1699 Woollens Act prohibited the exportation of Ulster wool to anywhere but England and Wales.

These agricultural disasters were compounded by rapidly increasing rents required by English landlords. The landlords were able to escalate the rents as the ballooning number of desperate Scots and Irish competed for the limited land. This led to a new system of auction bidding for leases, “rack rents.” In the half century prior to the American Revolution rents as much as quintupled in several areas of Ulster. Not surprisingly, this led to deep resentment from the tenants. One Ulster Scot who migrated to Virginia wrote his brother, ‘“You know why I left Ireland; you saw the miserable condition of my family, by a rise in my rent to the double of what was paid before, and the enclosure of the only ground where I could graze my few cattle; you saw the numerous companions of my misery spoiled insulted and abused.’” (Emphasis in original)

For those Ulsterites reliant solely on agriculture, natural conditions in the Eighteenth Century brought steadily declining prospects. Meager rainfall in the years between 1714-1719 led to very poor harvests and in 1716 a virulent disease spread through their herds and many farmers lost substantial numbers of sheep. Again from 1927-29 abnormally poor crop yields led to near famine.

Scotch-Irish immigration in the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries was limited and unfocused as the few migrants scattered from Boston to Charleston, laying no real beachhead for the Ulster migration. During this era some Ulsterites gave up established trades as carpenters, weavers, smiths, bricklayers and shoemakers to try their fortune the New World. As in the Highlands and Lowlands, however, in the Seventeenth Century most of the Ulster-Scots who ended up in America were sent in chains or fleeing from British persecution. In the half century before the American Revolution, however, religious and economic pressure sent more than a quarter of million Scotch-Irish to America. Shippers and emigration agents could not have found better circumstances to recruit potential Americans. Many Ulsterites were forced to book their passage as indentured servants. They were often transported with a few hundred convicts and a few wealthier men.

Early in the Eighteenth Century, Scots-Irish immigrants thought they would be welcomed as fellow Calvinists by New England Puritans. Many Presbyterian congregations migrated to America en masse together with their pastors. However as historian T.H. Breen notes, the “Puritans liked neither Scots nor Irish, partly because of their religion and their different national backgrounds but more especially because of their illiteracy, their physical dirtiness and slovenliness and their notable divergence from Puritan customs, habits, and outlook.”

As a result of the cultural clash and their unwillingness to pay a tithe to the Puritan clergy, most of the Scotch-Irish soon moved out to the frontiers of Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and what became Maine. By 1720 the Scotch-Irish were New Hampshire's second largest ethnic group. A typical example was the Reverend James McGregor who was accompanied to America by a substantial portion of his congregation. Although they originally settled in Worchester Massachusetts, they quickly established additional towns in New Hampshire and Maine.By the time the first large wave of Scotch-Irish hit American shores in the 1720s, Philadelphia had become the port of choice. Between 1700 and 1775 approximately 70 percent of the Scots-Irish entered through Philadelphia and other Delaware River ports. This may be explained by several factors. Initially the Pennsylvania authorities, including colonial secretary James Logan, Scotch-Irish himself, encouraged Ulster settlements in Pennsylvania. Secondly Pennsylvania had some of the most fertile farmland in the colonies and because of a labor shortage, this was very attractive to the Scotch Irish as most were like their Lowland cousins, plain, simple farmers living just above sustenance level. Moreover Pennsylvania offered an indentured servant excellent terms: fifty acres; an axe: two hoes; and two suits of clothing.

The flood to America became such a torrent that as the English and Irish landowners realized the consequences, they petitioned the English House of Lords for strict limits on migration. One of the proposals would prohibit anyone from granting land to any person who left Ireland without a license. This was rationalized on two grounds: (1) the need to keep a strong Protestant element in Ireland to counter the southern Catholics; and (2) heavy emigration would lead to less competition for land and thus lower rents. Although several such proposals were sent to the House of Lords, none were adopted.

Stymied by Parliament, Irish landlords turned to the courts. Those sea captains who advertised passage to America in Belfast papers were arrested. They were bound over to the assizes court by the local magistrates. To the landowner’s chagrin however, the judge freed them. The alarmed landlords then turned port administrator at Belfast who compliantly refused to grant ships clearance papers on the ground that the export of Irish wool was forbidden and the immigrants all carried wool blankets. After substantial delays the ships were allowed to sail only after proving that they had no minors, debtors, apprentices or fugitives and based upon ignorance of the local laws by foreign captains.

By the 1740s the immigrant tide was pushed ever westward down the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains into Southwest Virginia and the Carolinas. At the time of the American Revolution, about 90% of the Ulster refugees had made their homes in Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the Carolinas. Because of their ports New York, New Jersey and Delaware also retained substantial Ulster settlements. While many Scotch-Irish initially clustered on the coasts of Maryland and the Carolinas, the presence of slavery and the dominance of the Anglican Church discouraged settlement in these established areas and most moved to the frontier.

While all of these colonies were more tolerant than the New England Puritans, the Scots-Irish were generally still perceived as an uncouth and violent lot. For that reason they were encouraged to settle on the frontiers. Pennsylvania even had a general strategy of using the Scots-Irish immigrants as a buffer against the destructive ferocity of the Indians upon whose lands they were encroaching.

Many of the Presbyterian ministers from Ulster had been exposed to sophisticated Enlightenment theology but followed their “flocks” to the remote American frontier. John Elder was a native of County Antrim and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He came to pastor a church in rural Derry, a town with obvious Irish ties, in western Pennsylvania in 1734. Professor Esmond Wright point out Elder adopted the frontier ways of his congregation:

When John Elder entered the pulpit he carried his rifle with him up the winding stairs and kept it close beside him; the men of his church stacked theirs under guard at the entrance to the church, or hung them on the wooden pins provided around the interior of the building.

Following the explosion of slave labor, South Carolina became desperate for “white settlers.” In order to entice Europeans, the colony levied a tax on the importation of Negroes and used the proceeds to not only pay the passage of Protestant Europeans, generally Scots-Irish, but also to provide each with forty shillings and purchase their tools. The new immigrants were exempt from taxes for ten years and received fifty acres of land for each family member. Inducements like these were almost unimaginable to Scots barely subsisting on rented parcels of 10-12 acres. As a result of these enticements a huge influx of Scotch-Irish changed the ethnic composition of South Carolina from a black to white majority by 1790.

The economic and political power, as well as the Anglican and Quaker practices of the established elites in the coastal communities, made the Scotch-Irish feel ostracized. As they moved to the frontier the Scots-Irish moved much further apart than they had in Ulster and that necessitated more self-reliance. The frontier was not just distinct but different and alienated from the Tidewater. Moreover the frequent movement to ever-farther frontiers broke down social barriers and religious mores. This reinforced the elite’s perceptions of the Scots-Irish as barbaric. The self-reliant frontier inhabitants soon came to resent the bothersome administrative demands of the Eastern elites. Many in the Eastern establishment were also fearful and suspicious of the “wild” Scotch-Irish frontiersmen.

Land was cheap, even free, on the frontier and many simply squatted in defiance of law and authority. This frequently led to disputes with elite Eastern landowners. The Scotch-Irish immigrants spread across the forests, cleared and settled fertile land of their choosing. This inevitably also caused violent clashes with native tribes.

The frontier was not only shaped by, but also shaped, the Ulster immigrants.

As they joined shoulder to shoulder with Germans, Swedes and others, memories of Ireland began to dim and the Scotch-Irish became “less clannish.”

The Ulsterites appreciated their newly acquired material prosperity and quickly established an emotional bond with their adopted country. By “creating” the land they lived in, these Ulster settlers came to regard themselves as “American,” rather than an immigrant community. Along with their basic anti-English sentiments this helps explain why the Scotch-Irish gravitated to the independence movement. The rare exceptions seem to be generally related to those who harbored a stronger resentment of the colonial elites than the British.

In spite of the antagonism against the English carried by many of the Ulsterites, they expected the Crown to protect them against the French and more importantly, the Indians. In this they were largely disappointed. Once the French were defeated in North America (1763) attitudes toward Scotch-Irish immigration changed radically in London. The Crown had relied on Scotch and Irish immigration as a barrier against French expansion in America. While the British were interested in crushing the French forces in Canada they were less solicitous of the welfare of the Scottish settlers, many of who had settled in defiance of the 1763 Parliamentary prohibition against settlement beyond the Alleghenies. With the French defeated and the colonists showing an independent streak, attitudes in Whitehall changed quickly and petitions for land grants supporting Irish immigration were generally denied in the 1760s.

Conversely the French and Indian War forced upon these Scots frontiersmen the realization that they could effectively fight the Indian tribes without English assistance. During the French and Indian War the Scotch-Irish proved they were both fearless and ferocious in battle and needed little formal leadership to be effective in war. They also came out of that war realizing that any defense of their lives and property would have to be through their own, rather than the Crown’s, efforts.

These traits did not go unnoticed among the Eastern elites and raised justifiable alarm. A 1763 incident in Lancaster County Pennsylvania further emphasized the danger. Hearing the local and peaceful Conestoga Indians had provided secret aid to other natives during the French and Indian War, an armed group, known to history as the Paxton Boys, gathered to impose frontier justice. Without further investigation this Scotch-Irish militia killed twenty Conestoga Indians. When the ”Paxton Boys” were roundly condemned in Philadelphia another group of Scotch-Irish frontiersmen drew up a formal “Remonstrance of Grievances.” Rather than sending it to Philadelphia, however, they formed an armed band to deliver the message. The Eastern elite became alarmed as they saw this a potentially riotous, even rebellious mob. As historian James Leyburn notes in The Scotch-Irish, A Social History after this, “few conservatives could avoid an uneasy feeling that the Scotch-Irish might well, with their radicalism and their explosive tempers, undermine the stability of settled institutions.”

Students with a cursory knowledge of American history are familiar with the furor caused in the colonies by the English Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act and Townsend duties. These are generally understood to have culminated in the agitation leading to the famous “Boston Massacre” of 1770. The repeal of those duties quieted things in the eastern centers of colonial power. It was, however, far more difficult to assuage the building rage of the Ulster Scots along the frontier.

In 1766 Ulster Scots in South Carolina had begun to press for more government protection and services along the frontiers. They wanted more law and order since both bandits and Indians were exploiting the frontier areas. Only when a backcountry march on Charleston was organized did the legislature begin to provide for any upcountry courts.

This was symptomatic of the Ulster Scots complaint that they were under represented in the South Carolina legislature and therefore frequently over taxed and discriminated against. The haughty coastal planters ignored all such “back country” complaints as they had indeed gerrymandered the legislature strongly in their favor. The coastal elites maintained this advantage by mandating the arduous journey to “Charles Towne” to vote in any colonial election. Royal officials were also unwilling to compromise. Most shared Governor Tyron’s view that the backwoods settlers were “outcasts and fugitives of other colonies.”

This frontier “Regulator movement” picked up steam in both Carolinas between 1768-71. After several killings, kidnappings and cabin burnings, the Eastern establishment had seen enough of frontier democracy. In 1771 Governor William Tryron called out the militia and led the force against the backwoods Scots. Following the Battle of Alamance River, nine settlers were killed and several were taken prisoner. Four were executed. Hundreds of other participants fled over the mountains into what became Tennessee.

As Revolutionary ferment bubbled in America, Scots and Scots-Irish poured into America and brought their “old world” religious disputes with them. The Scottish Covenants had been a strong religious foundation underlying the Scottish revolutions against the English in the Sixteenth Century. Known as “Covenanters and Seceders” some of these Scottish immigrants insisted that those in the “new world” renew the covenants made in Scotland during the War of Three Kingdoms.

One American leader of these Covenanters, the Reverend Alexander Craighead, led his Pennsylvania congregation in a solemn ceremony praising “King Jesus” and condemning the British monarchy. Craighead preached that anyone claiming a royal privilege was usurping “the Royal Prerogative of the glorious Lamb of God.” When condemned by his Presbytery, Craighead led his congregation to Virginia then to the Carolinas. Here they received a warm welcome from the Scotch-Irish frontiersmen in Mecklenburg, North Carolina.

Not surprisingly Craighead and his Covenanters were early magnets for opposition to British rule. Like many frontier pastors, Craighead took a rifle to the pulpit and was one of the “fighting Presbyterians pastors” who later gained renown during the American Revolution. In fact he successfully led his congregation and other Ulsterites against a regiment of the King’s Highlanders in the key battle at Moore’s Creek Bridge, North Carolina that tipped public opinion in the Carolinas.

Not all of the Scotch-Irish employed their anti-English zeal on the frontier, however. Francis Alison was a native of County Donegal, Ireland where he had been a student and friend of Francis Hutcheson. Alison attended more than one Scottish University but graduated from Edinburgh in 1732. He came to America as a tutor for the family of John Dickinson, future American patriot and author of the Letter’s from an American Farmer.

Alison established the Academy School in New London, Pennsylvania. In 1746 Alison sought Hutcheson’s advice concerning the proper curriculum and texts for the new school. Indeed Alison appears to have adopted Hutcheson’s moral philosophy en todo and transported it to America. One of Alison’s early students, Charles Thompson, likely brought Alison to the attention of Benjamin Franklin who was a founder and Trustee of the Philadelphia Academy (later, the University of Pennsylvania).

In 1752 Alison left his school at New London to become the head of the Philadelphia Academy but also remained active as the president of the Board of Trustees at the New London Academy. The Philadelphia Academy meanwhile received a college charter and Alison taught moral philosophy, logic and metaphysics there until his death in 1779. Through his lectern Alison had a significant impact upon the philosophy and thought of the Revolutionary era. Alison taught Hutcheson’s philosophy to at least five signatories of the Declaration of Independence as well as Thompson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress. 

 While much of the time Irish events lay buried in the past, the dry seeds of a shared identity were capable of energizing political animosity across the sea. When the philosophical justifications of the educated combined with the religious passions of the rural majority, the mixture became explosive. As heirs of the Calvinist theology of the “equality of all souls before God,” the Ulsterites easily turned their religious passion into “fiery political radicalism.”

In May 1775 the predominantly Scotch-Irish militia of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina established a convention for grievances. More than a year before the Declaration of Independence that convention declared that the people of Mecklenburg were free and independent from English rule. The Scotch-Irish population in the western Valley of Virginia was also solidly aligned with the Patriotic cause. Following the Boston Tea Party the people of Augusta sent 137 barrels of flour to besieged Boston. The new county seat of Rockbridge was soon renamed Lexington while an academy nearby changed its name to Liberty Hall.

One of the Ulster Scots Presbyterians who kept a journal of his experiences in New Hampshire was Mathew Patten. Whether Patten harbored resentments from Ireland is not certain. Colonial historian, T.H. Breen notes, “other Ulster migrants whose background paralleled Mathew’s thoroughly disliked the English for the poverty and oppression they had visited upon the people of Ulster, Presbyterians as well as Catholics.” Like most American immigrants, Patten preferred his farm and family to political involvement. Nevertheless in 1774 Patten joined a local “mob” in physically chastening a lawyer who had opined that the New Hampshire Assembly lacked the legal authority to enact legitimate laws. By the spring of 1775 he had evolved to full support for armed resistance.

When actual hostilities broke out, but before any declaration of war, Matthew’s son, John Patten, enlisted in the “continental army.” He was part of this army when it attempted to invade Canada, before the Congress had even declared independence. John Patten died in Canada in May 1776. This stoked his father’s anger and strengthened his resolve. Although he was simple farmer he expressed his rage in the language of a patriotic pamphleteer:

He was shot through his left arm at Bunker hill fight and now was led after suffering much fategue to the place where he now lyes in defending the just rights of America to whose end he came in the prime of his life by means of that wicked Tyrannical Brute, (ney worse than Brute) of Great Britain.

The battles of Lexington and Concord galvanized Scotch-Irish opinion. In Westmoreland County Scotch-Irish farmers met immediately and adopted five resolutions declaring independence, ironically on July 4, 1776. In neighboring Pine Creek they also drew up a Declaration vowing to oppose the English policies with their lives and fortunes.

When fighting actually broke out during the Revolution, thousands of Scotch-Irish immediately joined the Continental army in Pennsylvania. Indeed Light Horse Harry Lee referred to the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania as “the line of Ireland.” They remained some of Washington’s toughest and most loyal troops. After the brutal Valley Forge winter of 1777-8 Washington has been quoted as saying, “If defeated everywhere else, I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scotch-Irish of my native Virginia.”

While it is not entirely accurate to say that the Scotch-Irish were categorically in favor of a break with England, no records exist showing any number returning to Ireland, Scotland or even departing for Canada at the outbreak of hostilities. Moreover it was this group of Scots which inspired numerous panegyrics regarding Scotch loyalty to the rebellion from Patriots and Loyalists alike. They were solidly Presbyterian and all Presbyterian churches were considered “sedition shops” which British troops had standing orders to torch.

One small but notable exception to the Scotch-Irish commitment to the American cause occurred in the Carolina Piedmont. Being primarily immersed in “taming the wilderness,” many settlers in that area remained largely indifferent to the war. Those who had been in the “Regulators” defeated by Governor Tyron at the Alamance River were required to take a loyalty oath to the king and many thought it would be dishonorable to repudiate it. Localized studies have indicated that the poorer more recent immigrants also tended to side with the Tories. This may be related to the fact that recent immigrants generally had smaller families and therefore qualified for smaller land grants. This created some resentment against the established settlers.

Others saw the mayhem caused by the revolution as a chance to settle personal and family feuds. As in some other frontier areas, the revolution became a civil war, with Scots occasionally on both sides. As Robert Lambert notes:

While there is no perfect correlation between Regulators and rebels, on the one hand, and moderators and loyalists, on the other, the animosities generated between individual families and neighbors in the Regulator struggle very probably carried over into the civil war, that raged through the backcountry during the Revolution.”

Even in the Carolina Piedmont however, most of the Scotch-Irish were committed to the rebel cause. Having captured Charleston, General Cornwallis sent Colonel Ferguson, a Scottish career officer in the British army, west into the Carolina backcountry. Ferguson, accompanied primarily by Scotch loyalists from the Highlands, was hoping to entice those of similar sentiments and reinforce the British view that the South would rally to their cause. He was sadly disappointed.

The heavily Scotch-Irish Patriot militia rallied from a wide region and intercepted Ferguson at King’s Mountain. The battle thus took the form of Scotch versus Scotch-Irish, with the latter clearly dominant. William Campbell, five of whose colonels were Presbyterian elders, led the latter into battle. As at Moore’s Bridge the Highlanders were soundly defeated.

Beyond the Carolinas few of the Scots-Irish had been part of the ruling elite in Ireland so only a limited number of Scots-Irish equated democracy with disorder. These had concluded that only imperial authority could keep local factions from inciting trouble as they had in Ireland. Even they acknowledged however, that while Britain must administer the Empire with a firm hand, it required a benevolent heart. Like the Scotch-Irish in general, they too became discouraged when it was clear Parliament was intransigent in its demand for American subservience.

Scotland’s Lowlanders and Highlanders experienced very different economic, religious and cultural conditions. Those Scots who passed through Ulster before arriving in America had yet a third perspective on the British Empire and their proper place in it. In their world-view they had been seduced by the English to leave Scotland for Ireland with assurances of religious freedom and economic gain. However, two generations later their offspring felt greedy English gentry and clerics had dishonored these “promises” and they left Ireland disillusioned.

This resentment played a central role in how the Scotch-Irish arriving in America perceived the English church and its nominative leader, the King. For many of the Colonists this became the raison d’état for open rebellion. Indeed some historical scholars have maintained that what brought, and more importantly kept, the rank and file American patriots into the protracted War for Independence was religious zeal, not philosophical concepts of liberty. The Scotch Irish provide a strong basis for this conclusion.