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Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (Hardcover)

by James Webb (Author) "GATE CITY IS more than four hundred miles from Arlington, down the long spine of mountains that marks Virginia's western border..." (more)
Key Phrases: rough wooing, mountain settlements, World War, New England, Ulster Scots (more...)
4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (149 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Former navy secretary Webb (Fields of Fire; etc.) wants not only to offer a history of the Scots-Irish but to redeem them from their redneck, hillbilly stereotype and place them at the center of American history and culture. As Webb relates, the Scots-Irish first emigrated to the U.S., 200,000 to 400,000 strong, in four waves during the 18th century, settling primarily in Appalachia before spreading west and south. Webb's thesis is that the Scots-Irish, with their rugged individualism, warrior culture built on extended familial groups (the "kind of people who would die in place rather than retreat") and an instinctive mistrust of authority, created an American culture that mirrors these traits. Webb has a genuine flair for describing the battles the Scots-Irish fought during their history, but his analysis of their role in America's social and political history is, ironically for someone trying to crush stereotypes, fixated on what he sees, in almost Manichaean terms, as a class conflict between the Scots-Irish and America's "paternalistic Ivy League-centered, media-connected, politically correct power centers." He even excuses resistance to the "Northern-dominated" Civil Rights movement. Another glaring weakness is the virtual absence of women from the sociological narrative. Webb interweaves his own Scots-Irish family history throughout the book with some success, but by and large his writing and analysis are overwhelmed by romanticism.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* In telling the story of the Scots-Irish in America as a robust and passionate tale, novelist Webb writes straightforward, no-nonsense, readable history that clips right along while it is also very personal and highly idiosyncratic about a people who, he claims, are largely invisible--taken for granted--to the general public and who, seldom thinking of themselves in ethnic identity terms, mostly don't know their culture. Webb maintains that Scots-Irish attitudes form the bedrock of American society, especially among the working class. Scots-Irish culture has produced American presidents from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, soldiers from Ulysses S. Grant to George Patton, pioneers, preachers, and others whose most common characteristics may be described as fierce individualism, persistent egalitarianism, and a strong sense of personal honor. Perhaps the most visible examples of broad and ongoing Scots-Irish legacy are the fundamentalist Christianity (a potent combination of Scottish Calvinism and headstrong populism) of America's Bible Belt and country music. Webb begins the Scots-Irish saga in Scotland, where, he says, the Scots-Irish character was formed, moves on to the Ulster Scots of what is now Northern Ireland, and follows them to the Appalachians and points beyond as well as through the American Revolution, the Civil War, and up to the present day. Popular history at its finest. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Broadway; Book Club edition (October 5, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0767916883
  • ISBN-13: 978-0767916882
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (149 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #150,517 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
GATE CITY IS more than four hundred miles from Arlington, down the long spine of mountains that marks Virginia's western border. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rough wooing, mountain settlements
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
World War, New England, Ulster Scots, South Carolina, Andrew Jackson, United States, North Carolina, Marine Corps, New York, West Virginia, William Wallace, Northern Ireland, Ulster Plantation, King's Mountain, New Orleans, Hadrian's Wall, Old Hickory, Appalachian Mountains, Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Big Moccasin Gap, Ohio Valley, David Hackett Fischer, Irish Catholics, Robert the Bruce
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Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
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Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America 4.1 out of 5 stars (149)
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149 Reviews
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105 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars History of the Scots-Irish, September 9, 2005
By Leonard J. Wilson (VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Born Fighting by James Webb is the history of the Scots-Irish over the last 2000 years. A few highlights:

1. Scotland was effectively created by the Roman Empire when Hadrian's Wall was built across Britain at the approximate location of the current border between England and Scotland. Rome controlled Britain south of the wall and the native Celtic tribes controlled the north. (Rome also effectively created the modern boundary between France and Germany when Caesar conquered Gaul but stopped at the Rhine.)

2. After the Norman Conquest, English kings attempted repeatedly to subdue the Scots and extend their rule to all of Britain. The victories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce maintained Scottish independence through the rein of Elizabeth I. Upon her death, the throne passed to James I of the House of Stuart who already ruled Scotland as James VI. One could almost say that Scotland thereby absorbed England, but the relative population sizes of the two countries gave England the upper hand almost from the beginning.

3. In the meantime, the Protestant Reformation had been underway in northern Europe, leaving Scotland strongly protestant (Presbyterian), England more mildly protestant (Anglican), and Ireland still Roman Catholic. To bring Ireland into the protestant fold and increase its loyalty to the British Crown, James I established the Ulster Plantation and encouraged protestant Scots to settle in Ulster starting in about 1610. These settlers from Scotland to Ireland became the Scots-Irish (or Scotch-Irish).

4. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the English Parliament deposed King James II principally because he attempted to reestablish a Catholic monarchy. The deposed king, with French (Catholic) aid landed in Ireland, rallied the Catholic Irish in southern Ireland and attacked the protestant settlers in Ulster. James was again defeated and exiled to France.

5. Meanwhile, various Test Acts had been enacted by the English Parliament and Crown that established the Anglican Church as the official Church of England and excluded non-Anglican Protestants, primarily Presbyterians and Puritans, from public office. A particularly harsh version was enacted in 1703 and led to the heavy migration of Scots-Irish from Ulster to America throughout the 1700s. They settled primarily in the Appalachian highlands, starting in Pennsylvania and migrating southwest to Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee and beyond. In numbers, the Scots-Irish far exceed the other groups of British settlers described in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: the New England Puritans from East Anglia, the Virginia Cavaliers from the south and West of England, and the Pennsylvania Quakers from the Midlands.

6. The Scots-Irish were characterized by poverty, family ties that extended both linearly across generations and collaterally to many degrees of cousins, strongly protestant beliefs, independence, distrust of governments in general, and a readiness to fight both individually as part of a local militia. Although the Scots-Irish Presbyterians shared a faith based on Calvinism with the Puritans of East Anglia and New England, there appears to have been little love lost between these groups.

7. The Scots-Irish provided the bulk of the Confederate Army although few held any slaves. During the decades following the Civil War, their poverty was worse than before the war, reaching a nadir during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This poverty prompted another mass migration to other parts of America which was accelerated by the mobilization for World War II. As a consequence, the Scots-Irish have been distributed through most of America, except perhaps New England. Their numbers and characteristics, especially their willingness to accept and absorb spouses from other ethnic groups into their extended families, have made the Scots-Irish folkways a key part of the American character.

So, is this a recommendation of Born Fighting to others? Yes, but a conditional recommendation. First, one should read David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (see my review) which describes and contrasts the four British groups, including the Scots-Irish, that settled America. Fischer's book is better written, broader in scope, more objective, and based on real scholarship. In contrast, Born Fighting is repetitive, focused on one ethnic group alone (making conflicts with others harder to understand), strongly Scots-Irish partisan rather than objective, and draws much of its best material from other modern authors, including extensive quotes from Fischer's book and Churchill's Birth of Britain. Still, Born Fighting was worth reading and gave me new insights, especially on the history of the Scots-Irish before their migration to America. For the record, my heritage is largely Scots-Irish.

Here are two additional suggestions. (1) David Hackett Fischer's Bound Away (see my review) which describes the migrations of Scots-Irish and others to, within and from Virginia. This book repeats some of the content of Albion's Seed but also presents new material on the migrations within and from Virginia. (2) Kevin Phillips' The Cousins' Wars which traces the recurring conflicts between the Puritans of East Anglia and New England and the Anglican Aristocracy of South and West England and the American coastal south through the English Civil War, American Revolution, and American Civil War. This book also draws heavily on Albion's Seed but adds much detail on the three wars that are its central focus. However, it appears to have a mild bias to the Puritan side.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, January 31, 2005
I had to log on and write a review of James Webb's brilliant and wonderful book " Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America." I bought the book in November, and after skimming through it and reading the first two chapters, I immediately ordered a copy for my father as a Christmas present. After finishing it, he told me it was the greatest present he had ever received, and that many of Webb's passages brought tears to his eyes. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American History, and for those millions of Scots-Irish Americans unaware of their heritage this is a must-read.

In "Born Fighting" author James Webb chronicles the millennial struggle of the Scots-Irish people from fighting to preserve their independence against the Romans and the English, through their migration to Ireland, then to the hardscrabble Appalachian frontier and beyond. Webb describes how the values of these fiercely independent, determined and impoverished people pervaded the society and culture of America, and how their influence is reflected in such diverse institutions as NASCAR auto racing, country music, the evangelical movement, the U.S. Armed Forces, and American Democracy itself.

Weaving distant history with personal family history, Webb details the struggle of these proud, impoverished people through their oppression by and resistance to the Romans, the English, the Irish Catholics, the Anglo-American pseudo-aristocracy of the Colonies, and the latter's successors, the so-called "Eastern Establishment." Through it all, the Scots-Irish survive oppression, scorn, war and poverty by drawing on their bottom-up, rather than top down social and political structure, and their collective fighting spirit to triumph. Webb's wonderful personal stories of his own family history cannot help but resonate with those Scots-Irish of today with similar backgrounds and experiences. It certainly did with me.

Until I read this book, like many of the millions of Americans of Scots-Irish descent, I never knew I had an ethnic heritage. I am now glad to know that not only do I have one, it is a proud one and storied one. I owe a debt of gratitude to Webb for imparting this to me through this magnificent book.

My father used to tell us as children that we were "Scotch-Irish." I didn't know what that meant at all until I took European History in high school. As an adult, I did some genealogical research on my family, gleaning what seemed to me to be loosely connected facts from church and census records. "Born Fighting" was invaluable in providing some context to what little I was able to learn.

Along with my aunt, I traced my family history to the mid-1700s in western Virginia, through my Great-Great Grandfather who enlisted in the Confederate Army in Charlottesville, VA on the day after First Manassas. He served in the 57th Virginia Infantry, part of Gen. Pickett's division at Gettysburg that was virtually wiped out on the third and decisive day of that bloody battle. My aunt found a picture of him at the Gettysburg Battlefield Visitors Center in his uniform, of which I have a copy.

My father, the son of a five-and-ten-cent store manager in the Depression-era South became the first of our Scots-Irish family to graduate high school. If that wasn't enough his high school grades got him into an Ivy League school, borrowing, washing dishes, waiting tables, and tending bar to pay his tuition and earn his degree. His sacrifice and hard work smoothed the road for his four children, two of whom are lawyers, one an economist, and the other a mathematics teacher. After reading this book, my father told me he had always been ashamed of his modest "white trash" or "redneck" background, but having read this book he could finally be proud of who he is and where he came from.

I have a 4 year old son and I am going to give him a copy of this wonderful account of our ancestors as soon as he is old enough to appreciate it. I want him to know what I now know about the hardships and difficulties of our ancestors and how they got us to where we are now. Their story has made me appreciate how far we have come.

To Mr. Webb, I say thank you for telling the story of our colorful and prominent ethnic heritage, and the role our forebears played in the evolution of our great republic.

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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Splendid polemics, April 4, 2005
I am a Scots Irish who lives in the UK.I found this to be a splendid book,but probably for reasons which differ from those of Scots Irish Americans.
The Scots history part is probably broadly correct in its general conclusions,but is mistaken in a lot of detail,and needs some sub-editing.Braveheart was a minor detail compared with the relentless harrying of Scotland by England over 400 years,harrying which left it the poorest country in Europe.The Ochil hills are not in Ayrshire.And so on.
The Irish history is fascinating,however,and is excellent,although more social history would have been welcome.
For me,the book excelled in its American chapters,although American readers may find some of his conclusions irritating,and he glosses over some acts of wickedness. What it explained to me was,why the U.S.A. re-elected Bush,and just why so many Americans found his Boston rival unacceptable.As a primer of modern American politics,it is superb.
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Published 7 days ago by Kay M. Muse

3.0 out of 5 stars The Whole Story please?
As much as I enjoyed the book I had to sit back post-read and reflect on why this book also tweeked my sensors...and I think I know why. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Pol

4.0 out of 5 stars Read Joe Bageant's take on this book
This is a book worth reading, but you should read Joe Bageant's take on it. In "Deer Hunting with Jesus" - especially in Chapter 6 - Bageant who is also Scots-Irish covers... Read more
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4.0 out of 5 stars Good read but...
As a true Celt (Irish born), I found this to be a fascinating story. It does stray into self-mythologizing at times but it does draw attention to a group that have been much... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Irish

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid
My brother gave this book to me as a gift, saying I should read it because "This is who we are." I read it. Read more
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3.0 out of 5 stars Born Fighting . . . Again and again
Competently written, although somewhat repetitive. The novelist in Jim Webb should have instructed, "don't tell them, show them. Read more
Published 6 months ago by N. Miller

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
Great, entertaining read, and if you happen to be of Scots-Irish descent, you may well see some of yourself in the vivid descriptions Webb uses in regards to the traits of the... Read more
Published 6 months ago by 3 chords and the truth

4.0 out of 5 stars Born Fighting
The book moves along at a quick pace and is a good read. Especially to those of British descent.
Published 7 months ago by Walter C. Adams

1.0 out of 5 stars A genuine klunker of popular history.
This is a sloppy, romantic view of the people who came from Scotland, Ireland and England to the U.S. over the centuries, and how they subsequently effected American culture. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Irving Warner

2.0 out of 5 stars Jim Webb--Fighting for the Wrong Cause
As an American of prodominately English descent, with a little Irish mixed in, I enjoyed this book about the Scots-Irish contributions to American wars and American culture. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Robert F. Randall

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