In Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 391, Prof. John Fiske says: “Until recent years little has been written of the coming of the so-called Scotch-Irish to America, and yet it is an event of scarcely less importance than the exodus of English Puritans to New England and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is impossible to understand the drift which American history, social and political, has taken since the time of Andrew Jackson, without studying the early life of the Scotch-Irish population of the Alleghany region, the pioneers of the American backwoods. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the whole of that population at the time of the Revolution was Scotch-Irish, for there was a considerable German element in it, besides an infusion of English moving inward from the coast. But the Scotch-Irish element was more numerous and far more important than all the rest.
“Who were the people called by this rather awkward compound name Scotch-Irish? The answer carries us back to the year 1611, when James First began peopling Ulster with Colonists from Scotland and the North of England. The plan was to put into Ireland a Protestant population that might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and become the controlling element in the country. The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster.
“That province had been the most neglected part of the island, a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolen and linens which have since been famous throughout the world. By the beginning of the eighteenth century their numbers had risen to nearly a million. Their social condition was not that of peasants; they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans. In a document, signed in 1718 by a miscellaneous group of 319 men, only thirteen made their mark, while 306 wrote their names in full. Nothing like that could have happened at that time in any other part of the British empire, hardly even in New England.
“When these people began coming to America, those families that had been longest in Ireland had dwelt there but for three generations, and confusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclature which couples them with the true Irish. The antipathy between the Scotch-Irish as a group and the true Irish as a group is, perhaps, unsurpassed for bitterness and intensity. On the other hand, since love laughs at feuds and schisms, intermarriages between the Colonists of Ulster and the native Irish were by no means unusual, and instances occur of Murphys and McManuses of the Presbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster to allude to Presbyterians as ‘Scotch,’ to Roman Catholics as ‘Irish,’ and to members of the English Church as ‘Protestants,’ without much reference to pedigree. From this point of view the term ‘Scotch’ may be defensible, provided we do not let it conceal the fact that the people to whom it applied are for the most part Lowland-Scotch Presbyterians, very slightly hibernicized in blood.”
Again, “By 1719 this hope was torn away, and from that year until the passage of the Toleration Act for Ireland in 1782, the people of Ulster kept flocking to America. Of all the migrations to America previous to the days of steamships this was far the largest in volume. One week of 1727 landed six ship loads at Philadelphia. In the two years 1773 and 1774 more than 30,000 came. In 1770 one-third of the population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish. Altogether between 1730 and 1770, I think it probable that at least half a million of souls were transferred from Ulster to the American Colonies, making not less than one-sixth of our population at the time of the Revolution.”
The merest examination of this will show that the writer is on uncertain ground; he is begging the question; his own training and education convince him that there is a false ring to the term “Scotch-Irish”; the statements he makes, or quotes, show the earmarks of that organized humbug the Scotch-Irish Society; and he is reluctant to face the question squarely, and, by reversing the conventional concealments, evasions, and falsifications which have marked the writing of American history in the interest of the English element, acknowledge the splendid work done by the Irish in America.
Let us examine his statements in detail.
Relative to Ulster settlement he says: “The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolens and linens; ... they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans.”
These extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish Society. We have an emigration from Scotland by, say 1650, of 300,000, with no account of the English, French, Walloon, and German emigrants who were introduced, and nothing said about the original settlers of Ulster, the Irish. In 1659 Sir W. Petty, a government official in Ulster, estimated the population as follows: Irish, 63,350; English, Scotch, and other aliens, 40,571; a total of 103,921. It is very possible that Sir W. Petty’s estimate was correct; that he would find it very difficult to arrive at a correct estimate of the Irish; and much more easy to get at the numbers of those who were naturally the English supporters. It is well to recall that at the date of this estimate Ireland had gone through the horrors of twelve years of Civil War, marked by cruelty of the most ferocious kind; that the Cromwellians had added deportation and slavery in the Americas to their other crimes and abominations; that Cromwell had settled his own soldiers on confiscated lands; and that he was not particularly partial to the Scotch, whom he had fought and defeated, and whose immigration he was not likely to encourage at a time when they were parleying with the exiled Charles and plotting the downfall of the Commonwealth.
Professor Fiske’s 300,000 seem to vanish in smoke.