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    Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
    Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
    Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
    Audiobook13 hours

    Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

    Written by Jim Webb

    Narrated by Allan Robertson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Born Fighting chronicles the full journey of the between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish settles who migrated to America in the eighteenth century. This remarkable group of settlers played a profound, but often unrecognized, role in the shaping of America. James “Jim” Webb traces the history of his people, the challenges they faced, and the qualities they developed that helped to settle the American frontier and define the American character.

    This story is both a distinguished work of cultural history and a human drama that speaks straight to the heart of contemporary America. Born Fighting reintroduces America’s most powerful, patriotic, and individualistic cultural group – one too often ignored or taken for granted.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLantern Audio
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781942248781
    Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
    Author

    Jim Webb

    Jim Webb is a long time Bible teacher, outdoorsman, businessman, and college instructor. It is a primary passion for the scriptures that has guided him in life, as well as the delight in sharing wonderful discoveries from the Word of God with others. Jim and Ruth Webb make their home in the Treasure Valley near Boise, Idaho.

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    Reviews for Born Fighting

    3.5/5

    73 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      What a farrago of ethnocentrism, stereotyping, and special pleading this turned out to be! I read this as a follow-on to J. D. Vance's Hill Billy Elegy, and also because, among my five ethnic groups, is Scots-Irish. As the book progresses, Webb increasingly merges the history of the Scots-Irish with his family history, finally setting up the Webbs as the paradigm of the ethnic group. They would probably consider my own Scots-Irish grandfather, a genial, prosperous concrete salesman who didn't hunt, didn't own a gun and had no wood-lore to be a total wuss, if not a traitor.The book starts out fairly well with a discussion of the future Scotland as the part of Britain cut off by Hadrian's wall, after the Roman's decided it wasn't worth conquering. Inhabited by Picts and Celts, with the later additions of the Irish Scotti, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Anglo-Normans, in the Middle Ages it became an independent kingdom. Beginning in the 16th century, partly driven by population pressures, some of the by now largely Presbyterian inhabitants accepted the opportunity to migrate to Ireland. In the 18th century, they begin to migrate to the British-American colonies. Here, according to Webb, they form the backbone of the American Revolution, even if they are not the theoreticians. There is some possible caviling with this account, but let's move one.Webb discusses the dispersion of the Scots-Irish in America. He tells us that some of them settled in Pennsylvania (like my forebears) and migrated westward across the northern United States; some made it to California. But those are not the people from whom he is descended, and we never hear about them again. He contrasts the tough, pioneering Scots-Irish to other settlers, like the more intellectual New Englanders, either not knowing or ignoring the fact that Scots-Irish Presbyterians founded Princeton.He praises Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the heavens, off-setting the Trail of Tears with the Jacksons's adoption of an Indian child. Not too equivalent, I think. Lets leave it that he had his good points, and his bad points, the latter of which Webb prefers to ignore. Apparently he is also the last wealthy Sots-Irishman that Webb is aware of. Hereafter, the story sticks to Appalachian mountaineers and poor whites. When Webb gets to the Civil War, the book really goes off the rails. Webb gets lost in the romance of the Lost Cause. Having earlier discussed the three classes of the South, placing the Scots-Irish in the middle of poor whites, he forgets this and plunges into the myth of the solidly unified South, fighting doggedly to the end. In fact, as recounted in William W. Freehling's The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, many poor whites objected to the battle for secession as "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight," especially since rich men weren't subject to the draft, even without buying their way out like they did in the North. While happy to claim West Virginia as a major center of the Scots-Irish, he ignores the fact that the state exists because the mountaineers of western Virginia didn't want to secede from the Union. When I took a geneaology course, the teacher warned us that if we were anxious to trace our heroic Confederate ancestors, we would probably find that they had deserted before the end of the war. The rest doesn't get any better. Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan are all the fault of the damnyankees, for which "red-necks" have been unfairly blamed. They are unfairly excluded from Harvard; the fact that Asians and Jews are so successful at getting in is just part of the unfairness. He doesn't consider that they were (and in some eyes still are) despised minorities who worked hard to earn their qualifications and to be accepted on the basis of their qualifications. Unlike Vance, in Hill Billy Elegy he doesn't consider that his stereotyped Scot-Irish, who he describes as unintellectual, might need to consider cultural changes, and could take a lesson. He talks about his father's heroic efforts to qualify for a degree while working and raising a family, but he can't quite seem to take a break from his ancestor worship to admit that if you don't want to live like your ancestors, you need be different from them, however admirable they may have been in their time.I'm going to read James G. Leyburn's The Scotch-Irish and David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed and hope for better.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book! So much research and information went into it! The Scotts and Scotch/Irish people’s history is a huge part of America’s history and explains so much about our history! Worth the time!
    • 4/5
      Even as I was reading Jim Webb’s entertaining and interesting book, I was struggling with how to characterize it. Fortunately, he resolved that problem when he wrote that “Literature, despite its emotional honesty, often thrives in the realm of imagination, histrionics, and deliberate exaggeration.” With these words appeared the resolution of that struggle, because while nothing presented here by the author can be found false, this really is a work of literature and memory rather than a volume of history. Jim Webb has woven together history, biography, emotional honesty, imagination and even histrionics and deliberate exaggeration to tell an important story about America and its people but it must be said with equal truth that this is a story about James Webb.However, I do fear that the author will leave many readers with the idea that the story as told here is the story of all Scots-Irish in America. I enjoyed “Born Fighting” in great part because it reflected my family’s Scots-Irish roots and their migration across America. Equally reflected in my family and my own life are many of the characteristics identified by the author as typically Scots-Irish traits and attitudes. But the fact is that my family’s story is not the one told here by the author, but is neglected as he makes his own desired point about this group’s contribution to America. My family’s story was the story of a northern migration– across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan in the 1840s. The Scots-Irish traditions described herein are strong across the North as well in the wake of this migration. It is perilous to try and equate surnames, geography, ethnicity, culture, and communal identity and thereby attempt to delineate and define one single community and its impact on a nation as large and ethnically diverse and yet mixed as America.All of that said, you do want to read this book – especially if you are interested in the history of the Scots-Irish in America – or in the author’s own story. Together, they make a telling chapter in the history of our nation and its peoples.
    • 2/5
      A passionate history of an entire people, told by one of its latter day scions. A hard people, a stubborn people, a violent people, the Scots-Irish make up a large portion of the American landscape. Some of our greatest soldiers, generals, and even presidents have come of this group. The author sets out to tell the history of his people and his own family. What shaped them? What defines them? And how has their culture helped to form America's?This is not a work of deep history. It's not critical and it's not detailed. It's quite short for the range of years it covers. The author had no interest in addressing the dirty or complex past of his people, only the shining victories. The book has the tone of "setting the record straight". It's obvious that the author is sick of hearing slurs, stereotypes, and dismissive language used regarding his people. While that is understandable, it isn't an attitude that lends itself to an unbiased history. Much that would sully the noble picture he is hoping to create is simply skipped.The redeeming parts of this book are when the author speaks to his own family and the history that has been passed down to him. These portions were so full of character and detail. It really makes you realize how vague the rest of the book is. I would have much preferred an in depth history of the authors family rather than a whitewashed and spotty history of the entire Scots-Irish race.
    • 4/5
      Parts of this book, Scots-Irish history and culture and its impact on America, were fascinating and enlightening. Glorification of that culture and some of its champions like Andrew Jackson diminished my assessment of the book.
    • 3/5
      History of the Scots-Irish in Scotland and Ireland and the migration to America. Includes his family history and overview of the Appalachia region in the 19th and 20th century. Goes into great detail about what makes up the Scots-Irish culture
    • 2/5
      What a farrago of ethnocentrism, stereotyping, and special pleading this turned out to be! I read this as a follow-on to J. D. Vance's Hill Billy Elegy, and also because, among my five ethnic groups, is Scots-Irish. As the book progresses, Webb increasingly merges the history of the Scots-Irish with his family history, finally setting up the Webbs as the paradigm of the ethnic group. They would probably consider my own Scots-Irish grandfather, a genial, prosperous concrete salesman who didn't hunt, didn't own a gun and had no wood-lore to be a total wuss, if not a traitor.The book starts out fairly well with a discussion of the future Scotland as the part of Britain cut off by Hadrian's wall, after the Roman's decided it wasn't worth conquering. Inhabited by Picts and Celts, with the later additions of the Irish Scotti, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Anglo-Normans, in the Middle Ages it became an independent kingdom. Beginning in the 16th century, partly driven by population pressures, some of the by now largely Presbyterian inhabitants accepted the opportunity to migrate to Ireland. In the 18th century, they begin to migrate to the British-American colonies. Here, according to Webb, they form the backbone of the American Revolution, even if they are not the theoreticians. There is some possible caviling with this account, but let's move one.Webb discusses the dispersion of the Scots-Irish in America. He tells us that some of them settled in Pennsylvania (like my forebears) and migrated westward across the northern United States; some made it to California. But those are not the people from whom he is descended, and we never hear about them again. He contrasts the tough, pioneering Scots-Irish to other settlers, like the more intellectual New Englanders, either not knowing or ignoring the fact that Scots-Irish Presbyterians founded Princeton.He praises Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the heavens, off-setting the Trail of Tears with the Jacksons's adoption of an Indian child. Not too equivalent, I think. Lets leave it that he had his good points, and his bad points, the latter of which Webb prefers to ignore. Apparently he is also the last wealthy Sots-Irishman that Webb is aware of. Hereafter, the story sticks to Appalachian mountaineers and poor whites. When Webb gets to the Civil War, the book really goes off the rails. Webb gets lost in the romance of the Lost Cause. Having earlier discussed the three classes of the South, placing the Scots-Irish in the middle of poor whites, he forgets this and plunges into the myth of the solidly unified South, fighting doggedly to the end. In fact, as recounted in William W. Freehling's The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, many poor whites objected to the battle for secession as "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight," especially since rich men weren't subject to the draft, even without buying their way out like they did in the North. While happy to claim West Virginia as a major center of the Scots-Irish, he ignores the fact that the state exists because the mountaineers of western Virginia didn't want to secede from the Union. When I took a geneaology course, the teacher warned us that if we were anxious to trace our heroic Confederate ancestors, we would probably find that they had deserted before the end of the war. The rest doesn't get any better. Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan are all the fault of the damnyankees, for which "red-necks" have been unfairly blamed. They are unfairly excluded from Harvard; the fact that Asians and Jews are so successful at getting in is just part of the unfairness. He doesn't consider that they were (and in some eyes still are) despised minorities who worked hard to earn their qualifications and to be accepted on the basis of their qualifications. Unlike Vance, in Hill Billy Elegy he doesn't consider that his stereotyped Scot-Irish, who he describes as unintellectual, might need to consider cultural changes, and could take a lesson. He talks about his father's heroic efforts to qualify for a degree while working and raising a family, but he can't quite seem to take a break from his ancestor worship to admit that if you don't want to live like your ancestors, you need be different from them, however admirable they may have been in their time.I'm going to read James G. Leyburn's The Scotch-Irish and David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed and hope for better.
    • 4/5
      A wonderfully detailed history of the Scots-Irish people. I especially appreciated how Webb brought out aspects of the Scots-Irish history that tend to be overlooked, such as that as poor Southern whites, the Scots-Irish were just as badly off as Southern blacks. The only thing they had going for them was that they weren't black in an era of segregation. Then civil rights activists came in and alienated poor Southern whites by blaming them, along with more affluent whites, for the plight of the blacks. This naturally enraged the Scots-Irish and turned them from potential allies into bitter enemies of civil rights, because they were being tarred and feathered for oppression they had little to no part in. Even today people rarely discriminate between economic classes and simply blame all Southern whites for slavery and segregation. I really appreciated Webb's careful scholarship in bringing this and other historical discrepancies to light.
    • 4/5
      I have a number of caveats about this book. It's more of a paean to the author's own culture than a true history, and as such, it presents some pretty sweeping generalizations. Some would challenge his readings of Scots-Irish and American history or even be offended by them. It might be, as I've seen in other reviews, that Webb's narrative is "self-indulgent" or a "mythologizing" of Scots-Irish and Southern cultures.

      But for all that, I truly enjoyed reading it. Even though my forebears settled farther North than most of Webb's subjects, I saw traces of my own family throughout. And I definitely appreciated his passionate effort to help readers see the heart of a culture that too few try to understand or respect. For that reason alone, I found it a highly worthwhile read. I learned a lot.
    • 4/5
      Webb outlines the warlike spirit of the Scots-Irish as he tells their history. I enjoyed the earlier parts of the book which were based on research far more than the latter parts which were more of a personal memoir. The author does offer insights into the cultures of Appalachia and the South. The reader can see how the Scots-Irish settlers shaped these cultures.
    • 4/5
      Excellent insight into this unique group of Americans. Generally not a history reader, Webb's easy style kept me engaged.