There are those who say the correct term is Scot-Irish, and that Scotch is an alcoholic beverage. There are those who prefer the term Ulster Scot and there are those who claim the term is a complete fabrication and deserves no recognition, sadly allot of Irish historians and musicians fall into the latter section, apparently we lack genes required to compose memorable ballads such as Danny Boy and win famous battles. Still the facts and truth remain, and it only leaves one to ask why some are so willing to distort and to create black holes in the historical record.

The term Scotch-Irish is an Americanism, used by historians to separate the Irish Presbyterian migration from the later Irish Catholic migration of the 19th century but it was first used back in 1573, you can read about that is the "What about the name section". British historians and today's Ulster Protestants rarely use the term and favor what they consider the more correct term, of Ulster-Scot or the Ulsterman.

This unusual term refers to those Presbyterian Scots who settled in Ulster (modern-day Northern Ireland) during the seventeenth century. From these 200,000 original settlers, many are still in Ulster but up to 2 million of their descendants eventually reached North America. Today they number an estimated 27.2 million.

The terms "Ulster -Scot" or Ulster Irish" do not seem to fill the need as well as Scotch Irish. So what we are left with, is who and what we are today, here in the USA and in Northern Ireland:

"the descendants of a group of people who refused to be held hostage under the tyrants boots either monetarily or religiously. A group of people who endured many hardships and much suffering to bring us to where we are today, and in so doing built for themselves a new home and for their descendants a new nation. Even in Northern Ireland we still survive and resist, We are....... very proudly........ Scotch Irish.

Has a total history of the Scotch-Irish has never been attempted, there is ample material of our origin and of our existence in Northern Ireland, but when we come to our emigration to America, excepting the causes which led to it, it is meager in the extreme.

Coming from one part of Great Britain to another, no record has been preserved of our arrivals as would have been the case had we been of alien origin; what we do know is that while a large majority came to Pennsylvania, tens of thousands of others settled in Virginia and the Carolinas. An estimated 200,000 of us landed at the American ports of Boston, Delaware (Philadelphia/Chester/New Castle); New York, Annapolis,Charleston, and the Virginia ports.

We took with us our religion and our schools, and those in Pennsylvania extended their settlements across the mountains and down the valley into Maryland and Virginia. When we gained a foothold, by our thrift, energy, enterprise and when we made our settlements important, we exercised influence in colonial affairs. When this point was gained we brought into public life an element directly antagonistic to the established order of things, and no one can deny that we were instrumental in bringing about the War for Independence, which we loyally supported.

We lived, increased, spread out over the south and west, and carried into Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas our democratic principles of human equality, of the responsibility of the governor to the governed, and of the supremacy of conscience over all established forms of thought, government, or worship. The American West was romantic only to people who write and read about it. There was nothing gentle about small log cabins with no windows, women dying of the black vomit of milk sickness, or a million passenger pigeons devouring one's hard-planted crops. Somehow we made it to Dixie. We liked to drink and brawl. We liked to fight and loved politics, which explains a long list of Scotch-Irish soldiers and politicians such as John C. Calhoun, Jeff Davis, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, "Stonewall" Jackson, William McKinley, and Ulysses Grant, 27 in America, and others in Canada and Australia in later generations.

Physically, we the Scots-Irish were very fit for the tasks of pioneers. We were a strong, tough and hardy breed, somewhat tall in stature , strong-boned, heavily muscled, leanand sinewy. We were broad shouldered, robust, hard-handed and wiry. We did not shrink from the heavy labor of leveling the forest, building our log cabins, and tilling the soil, or from the hardships and deprivations of the frontier.

We had been toughened for the tasks ahead by our experiences in the Scottish Lowlands and Ulster. Later, when the French and Indian War began in 1754, we endured with comparative ease the hardships of the military campaigns. The Indians apparently lived in some fear of the Scotch-Irish. Its of no great surprise that to day in Ulster the Scotch Irish still stand defiant even after 35 years of Irish Nationalist propaganda, terrorism and murder performed under the guise of Irish patriotism.

The mental and emotional qualities, as well as temperament and disposition, we possess stood out. We were and still are a strong-minded group, with great common sense. We were practical, level-headed, fearless, self-reliant, and resolute.

Today our descendants are found across the entire continent, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia form the most influential and presumably the most numerous element in the white population of those States; and in all probability the same thing is true of the population of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

One should also remember that many tens of thousands of Scotch Irish/Ulster Scots still exist in Northern Ireland, and as you know are still involved in a struggle with Irish nationalists to this day.

A sad but true fact is that even in 2002 some Irish elements still seek to expel the Ulsterman from his home, one of the most common anti Protestant insults which can be heard in Ulster is "go away back to Scotland where you belong" , unfortunately those still in Ulster have not won freedom and acceptance as we have long since in the USA.

A Scotch Irish saying in colonial America was " what we have we hold" from the same belief's and principals in Ulster to this day can be heard the equally poignant Scotch Irish call of " No Surrender "

Hollywood movies and myth would have us all believe that the conflict in Ulster has been between the British and Irish but to the Ulster men and women who live there and have suffered greatly at the hands of Irish terrorists it has been a long campaign of ethnic cleansing, hate and intolerance.