Literary History of the Early Scotch-Irish in America by Meredith Riordan

From reading about the Scotch-Irish who came to Virginia in the eighteenth century, two distinct images emerge. One image is of settled communities of Presbyterians devoted to the teachings of their church and determined to create a better life for themselves by taking advantage of the opportunities afforded them in the New World. The other image depicts stubborn and independent pioneers boldly extending America’s borders ever westward. Trying to establish the literary history of such a people produces similarly varied results: an attempt to synthesize the accounts of different sources would describe the Scotch-Irish as a predominantly illiterate people, most of whom could read but did not pursue higher education, and who placed great value on the importance of a university degree. However, despite these conflicting portrayals of the Scotch-Irish people and their literary interests, there are some predominant opinions and historical facts which, when related, present a more cohesive picture of who the Scotch-Irish were, and what they were reading and writing in or about eighteenth-century Virginia.

As their name implies, the Scotch-Irish had ties to both Scotland and Ireland. Ethnically, they were Scottish, but came from families which had relocated to Ulster (northeastern Ireland) in the seventeenth century. Ulster was the last Irish province to successfully resist English domination, but the surrender of native Irish leader Hugh O’Neill in 1603 and the subsequent “Flight of the Earls,” in which other Irish leaders left for the Continent, ended any further organized resistance to the English (Chepesiuk, 30-31, 37). The English then wanted to establish a non-Irish, non-Catholic presence in the province; one way they did so was by enticing Presbyterian Scots to move there. Many Scots were drawn by the unusually long and cheap leases being offered to tenants in Ulster, particularly during the rule of William of Orange in the 1690s (93, 97); accustomed to a lower and more labor-intensive standard of living than the English, they had less to venture and more to gain by the move (49).

This gain was in many cases short-lived, however, and within thirty years a number of these Scots were once again leaving their homes in search of something better. Religious, economic, and political pressures all contributed to the emigration. After William’s death in 1702 (Chepesiuk 93), his successor, Queen Anne, placed more emphasis on religious conformity as a means of centralizing her political power; while new laws were primarily intended to subdue the Irish Catholics, they also restricted the freedoms of any non-Anglicans, including the Presbyterians (94). Other problems were economic: when many of the aforementioned long, cheap leases expired in the 1720s, the practice of “rack-renting” became common— “absentee” and “spendthrift” English landlords, sensing an opportunity, suddenly raised rents considerably higher (97). The government, too, contributed to the hardships of the Irish Protestants by continuing various economic sanctions (such as requiring Irish wool to be exported only to England and Wales) designed to increase English profits at the expense of the Irish (96). And even if one could contend with all these difficulties of human origin, there was still nature to contend with as well: from 1714 to 1720, a prolonged drought killed crops while rampant diseases killed sheep and the people themselves (99). As Carlton Jackson says, “In the face of all these problems, the wonder is not that thousands of Scotch-Irish immigrated, but rather that it took them so long to make up their minds to do it” (41). The trickle of emigrants became a veritable flood by the 1720s, with about 3000 people sailing to America annually (Chepesiuk 101); the Scotch-Irish continued to emigrate throughout the 1700s, reaching especially large numbers in the 40s, 50s and 70s, when economic conditions in Ulster got particularly bad (100). Historians estimate that, in less than a century, over 300,000 Scotch-Irish came to America (111).

The earliest Scotch-Irish immigrants came to New England, but did not find the warmest welcome from the Puritans (Dickson 222); Pennsylvania then became the destination of choice because of its arable land and tolerant religious practices (Chepesiuk 117). But while the Pennsylvanian Quakers may have been tolerant of Presbyterian religious practices, they grew less tolerant of the Scotch-Irish themselves: “the Scotch-Irish were usually described as hot-tempered, rash, combative, and unfair toward the Indians” (119); they also had the irritating habit of preferring to squat on land instead of paying for it (120). Some Scotch-Irish remained in eastern Pennsylvania, while others felt that moving westward would give them access to more land with fewer hassles; additionally, for those who did want to acquire their land legally, the “authorities [. . .] were willing to make land available at cheap prices in the hope that the Scotch-Irish would serve as a protective border against the Indians” (121-22). Rather than push on across the mountains of central and western Pennsylvania, many turned south to Virginia, which also wanted to encourage frontier settlers who could keep the Indians at bay (122). According to Edmunde Burke’s Account of the European Settlements in America, published in 1761:

The number of white people in Virginia is between sixty and seventy thousand; and they are growing every day more numerous by the migration of the Irish, who, not succeeding so well in Pennsylvania as the more frugal and industrious Germans, sell their lands in that province to the latter, and take up new ground in the remote counties in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. These are chiefly Presbyterians from the northern part of Ireland, who in America are generally called Scotch-Irish. (qtd. in Ford 199)

Those Scotch-Irish who did remain in eastern Pennsylvania seemed to have slightly more time and inclination for intellectual pursuits; those who went to the frontier had lives which required greater labor for survival and sustenance. But regardless of their level of education, the Scotch-Irish were generally a practical people who “dealt with the possible, getting as much from it as they could. They produced more generals, politicians, and newspapermen than poets, artists, and writers” (Jackson 148). Even so, like the Puritans, they had a “belief in acquiring at least a modicum of education” (102). Historian James G. Leyburn claims that “Schoolmasters were eagerly sought after in all Scotch-Irish communities” (288), but admits the “practical difficulties” of bringing trained teachers to frontier outposts (320). When feasible, ministers would teach as well as preach; at best, these frontier schools were simple affairs, meeting in churches or a minister’s log cabin home (Jackson 103). But ministers too were in short supply, and children were often reliant upon their mothers for teaching them to read (Chepesiuk 131). The goal of literacy was, for the Scotch-Irish, almost exclusively a religious one: most families would own a Bible and copies of the Confession of Faith, the Shorter Catechism and the Longer Catechism (Leyburn 287); additional reading might be done from a work of major theological significance, such as Calvin’s Institutes (74), but “belles lettres were absent... nothing in their way of life during the eighteenth century in America provided an incentive to develop interest in the fine arts” (324).

This is not to say that there was no Scotch-Irish interest in higher education. On the contrary, “The Presbyterian clergy [. . .] were quite an erudite lot” (Jackson 102), not only by preference but by design: “Each Presbyterian minister had to be a university graduate who had undergone a rigorous training period, which included the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew” (Chepesiuk 138). Not having enough trained clergy coming from England and Scotland, the colonial Scotch-Irish began founding colleges in America; the first such institution, founded in Pennsylvania, was known as the “Log College” (Middleton 294). Although the college no longer exists, other Scotch-Irish educational initiatives fared better: Hampden-Sidney College, the first in Virginia, was begun in 1776 (Ford 447); given a generous endowment by George Washington in 1796, Liberty Hall in Rockbridge County, Virginia, was renamed Washington Academy and is today known as Washington and Lee University. And while the most well-known Scotch-Irish school is located in New Jersey, it drew students from Virginia, including James Madison, who chose to attend Princeton instead of Virginia’s own William and Mary because, whereas William and Mary and even Harvard and Yale were fairly provincial in their student body, “every colony was represented among the students” at Princeton (Gaillard Hunt, qtd. in Ford 440). Perhaps the most glowing tribute to the Scotch-Irish influence on American education comes from the Reverend Joseph Doddridge, who in 1818 wrote to a fellow Episcopalian that “To the Presbyterians alone we are indebted for almost the whole of our literature,” because “They began their labors at an early period of the settlement of the country, and have extended their [. . .] educational establishments so as to keep pace” with the nation’s rapid development ever since (qtd. in Ford 277).

Crediting the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians with providing for “the whole of our literature” would have been a less extravagant statement in 1818, but still seems high praise for a group of people who did not, themselves, create any literary masterpieces—who did not, in fact, seem to read any, either. Yet literary activity does not have to refer to the aforementioned “belles lettres”; it can simply refer to reading and writing. And in this sense, even on the Virginian frontier, evidence of Scotch-Irish literary activity is woven throughout the major events of eighteenth-century America: the Great Migration, the Great Awakening, the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War.

One could argue that literary activity is what made the Great Migration as “great” as it was. Andy Bielenberg notes that “The emigrants to the New World, while not the poorest, were largely drawn from lower ranks of Irish society” (217). However, many of these people, even among the sizable percentage who had to become indentured servants for several years to pay for their passage, wrote letters to relatives back in Ireland; their descriptions of the bounty of America were often enough to persuade other dissatisfied family members to emigrate as well (Chepesiuk 104). Shipping agents, too, must have counted on a reasonably literate Scotch-Irish population, as they spent the money to advertise in the Belfast News Letter that their particular ships would “have Plenty of the best Provisions and Water put on board for the Voyage, and will spar [sic ] no Expense to have those who take their Passage [. . .] agreeably and comfortably accommodated” (advertisement for the Glorious Memory, qtd. in Dickson 121). Even William Penn, in an effort to populate his colony with those he thought would make resourceful colonists, played to the literacy of the Scotch-Irish during a European recruiting trip by using “the distribution of broadsides to publicize the colony’s advantages” (Chepesiuk 118).

The Scotch-Irish who came to America during the first wave of the Migration found their lives undergoing another radical alteration during the Great Awakening, which began in 1738; the evangelists of this religious revival, such as the Methodist preacher George Whitefield, were actively seeking converts through an emotional style of preaching which placed emphasis on “the heart rather than the head” (Middleton 288). The Presbyterians were divided in their response: the “Old Siders” wanted the church to retain its intellectual, theological approach to religion, while the “New Siders” followed Whitefield and others of his ilk (Fitzpatrick 115). The debates at times became heated, and “divisions were especially bitter after Gilbert Tennent [a Scotch-Irish New Sider from Pennsylvania] published his pamphlet The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, which attacked the conservatives (Middleton 289). In 1758 the split was “formally healed,” but the church ended up losing a number of New Siders to the Baptist denomination, in part over a debate regarding education: despite pressure from some New Siders, the Presbyterians never officially relaxed their standards requiring clergy members to hold a university degree, but to preach in a Baptist church, one needed no formal education—just a spiritual vocation (Leyburn 281-83). Meanwhile, the religious movement left us with sermons which provide a written record of a changing rhetorical style. The preaching style of Samuel Davies, who spent some years working among the Scotch-Irish in Virginia, had an influence on the oratory of Patrick Henry (Ford 390). His work in Virginia was followed by that of James Waddel, also an impressive speaker, a “fine classical scholar, and a man of cultivated literary taste” (Ford 392); William Wirt, at that time a lawyer and eventually the nation’s Attorney General, once heard him preach and wrote that “If he had been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely have been more divine,” possessed as he was with “a union of simplicity and majesty” (qtd. in Ford 395-96). Historian Henry Jones Ford feels that, freed by the Great Awakening from the oratorical constraints of the past, such Scotch-Irish preachers “had a marked effect upon literary style” because they “were the agents by whom [the] heavy prose style derived from England was superseded by the warm, vivid, direct energetic expression of thought and feelings characteristic of American oratory from the time of Patrick Henry down to the present time” (397).

Of course, what Davies does not mention is that the Scotch-Irish were partly to blame for the escalation of hostilities, as they kept moving west with no regard for the Indians who had been there first (Chepesiuk 124). Fought more as a series of skirmishes than as a typical war, the French and Indian War lasted from 1756-1763, as both the French and Indians sought (ultimately unsuccessfully) to reclaim territory which had been encroached upon by the colonists living on the frontier; because so many of these frontier colonists were Scotch-Irish, it was they who “bore the brunt of the Indian onslaught” (125). The diaries kept by frontiersmen such as Cumberland Valley farmer James McCullough give insight into the Scotch-Irish response: as a wry comment on England’s perceived lack of support, McCullough writes, “God bless King George, wherever he may be”; the situation becomes more grim as he keeps ongoing track of the people he knows who have been killed or kidnapped; tragedy finally strikes him as well, when in 1756 his own sons are taken by the Indians (Fitzpatrick 74). Also recorded are the deeds of John Craig, a Virginia pastor who chastised those who retreated toward the coast, and “contrasted their behaviour with the ever-growing legend of their forefathers’ achievements at the siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne [. . .]. Craig was a gentle scholar but that did not prevent him from fighting beside his congregation”—he apparently took his rifle into the pulpit with him and encouraged his flock to bring their weapons to church as well (80). In addition to the reactions of the Scotch-Irish to their individual encounters with the fighting, we have journals from men like Hugh McAden, who describe their reactions to the more well-known battles. Hearing of British General Braddock’s defeat while traveling through the Valley of the Shenandoah, McAden writes that it is “the most melancholly news” which, “together with the frequent account of fresh murders being daily committed upon the frontiers struck terror to every heart. A cold shuddering, possessed every breast, and paleness covered almost every face” as “all met in companies with their wives and children and set about building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such barbarian and inhuman enemies” (qtd. in Ford, 401-02). The accounts we from McCullough, Craig, McAden and other Scotch-Irish show that the French and Indian War was a military conflict with sobering effects on the civilian population of the frontier.

The final major event of the eighteenth century on which the Scotch-Irish left literary footprints was the Revolutionary War. Leyburn describes the Virginia Scotch-Irish as “enthusiastically patriotic” (306), and official resolutions were passed by several Virginian communities in 1775: the citizens of Abingdon declare that an “unconstitutional power hath pursued us to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, Nature, and the rights of humanity have vested us”; Fincastle residents, that they will break allegiance with Britain if “our enemies will attempt to dragoon us out of these inestimable privileges which we are entitled to as subjects, and to reduce us to slavery”; those of Staunton also promise that they “will not surrender any of these rights to any body in which we have no voice” (qtd. in Jackson 123-24). The language of these resolutions is similar to that used in the most famous of American revolutionary documents, The Declaration of Independence, which was itself signed by seven Scotch-Irish, “written in the hand of” a Scotch-Irishman, and published in the aforementioned Belfast News Letter (Jackson 127). Once the war began, the Scotch-Irish seemed to do more fighting than writing, which in turn prompted others to write about them, such as the British captain who claimed that the war should not be called “an American rebellion” because it was “nothing less than a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian rebellion” (Chepesiuk 143).

From immigrants’ letters during the Great Migration, to preachers’ sermons during the Great Awakening, to pioneers’ journals during the French and Indian War, to communities’ resolutions on the eve of the American Revolution, the Scotch-Irish in Virginia and elsewhere made their mark in colonial society and left written records to tell of it. Other historians would argue that even more important are the educational institutions they gave their country, and the legacy of literacy they gave their descendants. The influence they had in shaping America came more from the Scotch-Irish as a group than from the distinguished contributions of several Scotch-Irish individuals. But what then has become of this second-largest (behind the English) group of eighteenth-century immigrants? (Chepesiuk 1). According to Leyburn: .

“(T)he perennial pioneer and the settled Scotch-Irish [both] became representative of an American ‘type.’ The restless frontiersman, too occupied with elementary affairs of clearing the wilderness and making a home to have time for refinements, is a stock figure in American annals. So also is the rising middle-class person, whose numbers always included many of the Scotch-Irish who had not gone west in pioneer days, but had stayed to improve their farms, increase their businesses, add comfort to their homes, and accumulate things.” (325)

And yet, though these “representative types” still exist, we have little knowledge of the Scotch-Irish as a separate ethnic entity today (Chepesiuk 2). However, the reason for this seems to be that, over time, they were so “easily absorbed into mainstream America” (2); particularly those Scotch-Irish who moved west with the expanding frontier tended to marry with those of other ethnicities and to lose their distinctive heritage (Cunningham 90). Ironically, because of their numerous individual literary efforts which exerted a group influence on our nation, and by subsequently assimilating so well that the boundaries of the group itself have been largely obscured, the Scotch-Irish are perhaps among the most “representative Americans” of all.

Thursday, March 2, 2006

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