WEBVTT NOTE 10. The Ulster Scots 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.300 Volume 2, Chapter 10, The Ulster Scots 2 00:00:04.300 --> 00:00:15.960 Pennsylvania, during the first half of the 18th century, was the focal center for a great wave of non-English immigration into the American colonies. 3 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:32.460 The American colonies grew with great rapidity, the total population rising from 250,000 in 1700 to almost 1,200,000 in 1750, an almost five-fold increase. 4 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:41.460 Of this rise, the bulk was caused by immigration, and the great part of this migration came from two non-English groups, 5 00:00:41.460 --> 00:00:50.460 The Ulster Scots called the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. The major part of them settled in Pennsylvania. 6 00:00:50.460 --> 00:01:08.460 If the total population grew fivefold between 1700 and 1750, Massachusetts and New York populations rose scarcely more than three times, the latter's meager growth reflecting its restrictive land policy. 7 00:01:08.460 --> 00:01:23.460 In contrast, the population of Pennsylvania, the newest colony in 1700, rose from 18,000 to 120,000 in this period, a remarkable increase of nearly seven-fold. 8 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:29.460 Pennsylvania was now more populous than Connecticut and considerably more than New York. 9 00:01:29.460 --> 00:01:36.460 This influx led to an accelerated swamping of the original Quaker element of Pennsylvania 10 00:01:36.460 --> 00:01:41.460 and to increasing tension between the newcomers and the Quakers. 11 00:01:41.460 --> 00:01:49.460 By the end of the colonial era, Pennsylvania was approximately one-third German and one-third Ulster-Scott. 12 00:01:49.460 --> 00:01:54.460 The Ulster-Scots were the largest immigrant group in the 18th century. 13 00:01:54.460 --> 00:02:06.460 These men were, in the main, intense Presbyterians from lowland Scotland, whose families had been settled in Ulster in Northern Ireland during the seventeenth century. 14 00:02:06.460 --> 00:02:16.460 By the turn of the eighteenth century, England began to oppress the Ulster men. A woollen act gravely crippled the export trade of Ulster weavers, 15 00:02:16.460 --> 00:02:23.500 Ulster Weavers, a test act, disenfranchised the Presbyterians, and tenants were especially 16 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:29.100 oppressed and rack-rented by absentee feudal English landlords. 17 00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:38.100 The first great wave of Ulster-Scott immigration came after the agricultural failures of 1716-17, 18 00:02:38.100 --> 00:02:45.100 and further great waves came in the late 1720s, the early 1740s, and the mid-1750s. 19 00:02:45.100 --> 00:02:54.140 In the late 1850s, by 1776, a quarter of a million Scots had come to America from Ulster. 20 00:02:54.140 --> 00:02:59.660 The Ulster Scots flooded into Pennsylvania, where newcomers were particularly welcomed 21 00:02:59.660 --> 00:03:07.140 and generally found their way to the Western frontier, at that time in southeast Pennsylvania. 22 00:03:07.140 --> 00:03:13.100 The bulk of the Scots, being poor, came to America as indentured servants, and after 23 00:03:13.100 --> 00:03:20.100 After their term of servitude had ended, received the customary allowance of land as an incongruous 24 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:27.120 form of compensation. Most of the Ulster Scots thus became small farmers or squatters in 25 00:03:27.260 --> 00:03:33.540 such areas as the Susquehanna and Cumberland Valleys. Eventually many filtered southward 26 00:03:33.540 --> 00:03:40.540 down the Shenandoah Valley to become backwoods frontiersmen in Virginia and Piedmont farmers 27 00:03:40.540 --> 00:03:42.540 in the Carolinas. 28 00:03:42.540 --> 00:03:48.620 Quite a few Scots, however, mainly those from Scotland itself, became businessmen and tobacco 29 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:52.540 warehousemen in Virginia and Maryland. 30 00:03:52.540 --> 00:03:58.860 Some Jacobite Highlanders also came to America after the unsuccessful Stuart Rebellions of 31 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:07.300 1715 and 1745, but these, too, were Presbyterians rather than Roman Catholics. 32 00:04:07.300 --> 00:04:14.260 The brawling, hard-drinking Scott frontiersman, though often fur traders with the Indians, 33 00:04:14.260 --> 00:04:21.140 adopted a violent, aggressive, and contemptuous course toward the natives, and tended to drive 34 00:04:21.140 --> 00:04:23.560 them out of their lands. 35 00:04:23.560 --> 00:04:29.920 This attitude brought them into sharp conflict with the Pacific Quakers, concerned with justice 36 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.220 toward the Indians. 37 00:04:32.220 --> 00:04:38.380 It must be recognized, however, that the bulk of Indian-claimed land was not settled and 38 00:04:38.380 --> 00:04:46.300 transformed by the Indians, and that, therefore, the Scots were at least justified in ignoring 39 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:52.920 vague abstract claims, whether by government or by Indian tribes, to the lands they knew 40 00:04:52.920 --> 00:05:00.620 that they were settling. Many of the Ulster Scots were squatters on frontier land, lacking 41 00:05:00.620 --> 00:05:06.540 and money to pay the prices asked by the feudal proprietary, they reasoned that they were entitled 42 00:05:06.540 --> 00:05:13.760 to own virgin land that they themselves had cleared and tilled. They needed no acquaintance 43 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:19.480 with John Locke to sense that such land was their rightful property. The Pennsylvania 44 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:24.460 government tried for a long while to collect quit rants and purchase payments from the 45 00:05:24.460 --> 00:05:28.060 of Squatters, but to little avail. 46 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:33.640 Several times, Provincial Secretary Richard Peters tried to dispossess squatters by arriving 47 00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:39.920 with a party of officials to burn down the cabins of the settlers, only to have the squatters 48 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:44.860 rebuild the cabins and farm the land again after they had gone. 49 00:05:44.860 --> 00:05:49.180 At other times, squatters fought back against government aggression. 50 00:05:49.180 --> 00:05:55.260 By the mid-18th century, the Ulster Scots dominated the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia 51 00:05:55.260 --> 00:06:01.660 and the upcountry Piedmont Farm region of North Carolina and South Carolina. The valley 52 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:07.100 settlers, remote at first from the seat of government authority at Williamsburg, developed 53 00:06:07.100 --> 00:06:13.500 their own customary law of settlement, which granted original property rights to land on 54 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:21.580 In the basis of certain marks of settlement, these marks conferring ownership included cornright 55 00:06:21.580 --> 00:06:29.900 and taking up land, earned by planting crops and building a home, tomahawk right, earned 56 00:06:29.900 --> 00:06:36.940 by clearing a few trees, and cabin right, gained by building a log cabin. 57 00:06:36.940 --> 00:06:41.760 These were rough criteria, usually overly generous to the individual settlers, but the 58 00:06:41.760 --> 00:06:48.820 The system was an instructive example of rough justice emerging from customary law, developed 59 00:06:48.820 --> 00:06:55.120 solely by the voluntary actions of the people and without the imposition of statute or decree 60 00:06:55.120 --> 00:07:00.840 of the state. It might have been expected that the Ulster Scots would choose to settle 61 00:07:00.840 --> 00:07:06.640 in Calvinist New England, which was closest to them in religious conviction, but subtle 62 00:07:06.640 --> 00:07:12.320 The two religious differences meant a great deal to the Puritans, and they made the Presbyterians 63 00:07:12.320 --> 00:07:14.520 decidedly unwelcome. 64 00:07:14.520 --> 00:07:20.360 Indeed, one of the first groups of Ulster immigrants, several hundred strong, arrived 65 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:26.960 at Boston in 1718 to face a decidedly hostile reception. 66 00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:31.320 Most were shunted off to Maine and ended in New Hampshire. 67 00:07:31.320 --> 00:07:36.180 One group settled in the frontier town of Worcester, Massachusetts, but was promptly 68 00:07:36.180 --> 00:07:39.220 persecuted by the Puritans there. 69 00:07:39.220 --> 00:07:45.400 They were coerced into merging their Presbyterian church into the Puritan church and found themselves 70 00:07:45.400 --> 00:07:49.980 forced to pay tithes to support their persecutors. 71 00:07:49.980 --> 00:07:54.960 To the Presbyterians' petition for relief from the tax, the Worcester township denied 72 00:07:54.960 --> 00:07:59.840 their right to independence from the established Puritan church. 73 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:05.760 When the Scots began to build their own church, the Puritans destroyed the building. The hapless 74 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:11.040 Scots were thus forced to move to the more remote western frontier and there founded 75 00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:18.040 settlements at Warren and Blandford. Religious hatred was bolstered by ethnic feeling against 76 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:25.480 the foreign Scotch-Irish and by the fear of economic competition. Bostonians also did 77 00:08:25.480 --> 00:08:31.880 did not want their taxes to be raised to pay for expected welfare and poor relief for the 78 00:08:31.880 --> 00:08:38.440 influx of ulstermen. This was understandable, but it was characteristic that the Bostonians 79 00:08:38.440 --> 00:08:44.920 blamed the ulstermen instead of their own law, which provided for an escalating drain 80 00:08:44.920 --> 00:08:51.440 on the taxpayers for payments to any poor resident. All these factors caused a mob to 81 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:58.440 The story was the same in Connecticut. Of the original Boston group of Ulster-Scots, one part settled in Volontown, now Sterling, in northeastern Connecticut. There the Scots were confronted by an official remonstrance of the town council when they obtained their first press release. 82 00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:23.440 Presbyterian Minister. 83 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:29.160 Because he is a stranger, we are informed that he came out of Ireland, and we are informed 84 00:09:29.160 --> 00:09:33.640 that the Irish are not wholesome inhabitants. 85 00:09:33.640 --> 00:09:40.200 New England hostility to Presbyterian newcomers was, moreover, not overcome by any great need 86 00:09:40.200 --> 00:09:43.000 for more indentured servants. 87 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:50.920 By the 18th century, the greatest need for more forced labor was on large farms and plantations, 88 00:09:50.920 --> 00:09:56.440 And aside from the Narragansett country, there were few such opportunities in New England, 89 00:09:56.440 --> 00:10:00.440 in contrast to the Middle Atlantic and Southern colonies. 90 00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:08.240 As a consequence, religious and ethnic hostility could reign unbridled, and therefore few Ulstermen 91 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:10.080 settled in New England. 92 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:16.160 Instead, they chose Pennsylvania, the great haven of religious freedom and of separation 93 00:10:16.160 --> 00:10:18.040 of church and state. 94 00:10:18.040 --> 00:10:24.000 As for the other Middle Atlantic colonies, New York, with its feudal land structure, 95 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:30.020 was singularly unattractive to would-be farmers. Furthermore, while there were many English 96 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:38.020 Presbyterians on Long Island, the persecution of the revered elder statesmen of Presbyterianism, 97 00:10:38.020 --> 00:10:45.020 the Reverend Francis McKimney and Ulster Scott by Lord Cornbury, did not endear New York 98 00:10:45.020 --> 00:10:52.940 to the Ulsterman. In late 1706, Lord Cornberry, royal governor of New York, arrested and imprisoned 99 00:10:52.940 --> 00:10:59.280 McKinney for allegedly preaching without a license. Though McKinney was eventually acquitted, 100 00:10:59.280 --> 00:11:06.060 he was compelled to pay the cost of his prosecution and was imprisoned a long time before trial. 101 00:11:06.060 --> 00:11:10.460 Furthermore, the ordeal hastened McKinney's death. 102 00:11:10.460 --> 00:11:16.860 Delaware, to be sure, contained numerous English and Welsh Presbyterians, but tiny Delaware 103 00:11:16.860 --> 00:11:23.100 was already pretty thoroughly settled, and there was little good virgin land available. 104 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:28.820 New Jersey was also heavily Presbyterian, but these Presbyterians were either from England 105 00:11:28.820 --> 00:11:37.260 or from Scotland proper, including Highlanders escaping after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. 106 00:11:37.260 --> 00:11:40.540 There again, there was little need for indentured servants.