The current airing on a streaming service of the film Hillbilly Elegy, based on J.D. Vance’s memoir, prompted me to offer again my review of his book (with a few additions and corrections) and my comments on some of the historical writing about the “Scots Irish” or Ulster Scots. (J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: Harper Press, 2016.)

We are drawn to conflict. In our literature, in our films, in our history. Conflict sells. Internal conflict makes for more interesting characterizations-imagined or in real-life. Conflict that simmers through generations is often inspired by resentment over real or imagined wrongs. We certainly see that resentment can inspire fierce politics. Is conflict born of resentment the main driver in expressions of the American character? The Declaration of Independence, philosophical references aside, is a list of grievances, grievances that inspired defiance and revolution.


Before history instruction was drowned in the sea of identity politics, we were taught that the thirst for liberty had brought many of the oppressed to America: religious independents, protestants fleeing conformity to established church doctrines, landless commoners denied land by privileged nobilities, landless children of nobles who were victims of primogeniture, losers in European struggles for power, the desperately poor whose crimes were too minor to waste the cost to imprison them, and increasingly in 18th century England, the impoverished and future-less inhabitants of big cities.


Frequently financing their travel to the new world by giving up their personal freedom temporarily through the indenture system, colonists often found their aspirations mired in conflicts with colonial authorities. Colonial administrations in America feared a loss of control over those bold enough or desperate enough to venture into the domains of Native Americans. Royal governors and their councils passed regulations that made it illegal to “go native.” It must have been an attractive alternative to the interminable squabbling and misguided efforts of local authorities to make the colonies profitable.


The British crown sought to regain control by issuing a proclamation in 1763 denying the colonial governments’ claims (as well as those of squatters, trappers, herdsmen, traders and land speculators) to lands and commerce beyond the continental divide (i.e. the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains). Land speculators often ignored the injunction. Long-range hunters, surveyors and squatters certainly did. The British claimed these lands after France’s defeat in the bitter struggle we know as the French and Indian War. The London government hoped to protect their great trading houses and the profits that would now come to British, not French, firms deeply invested in the Indian trade. American frontiersmen typically ignored this infringement on their freedom and operated far from the seats of regulation.

Americans also bitterly resented the imposition of taxes by the British Parliament aimed at forcing Americans to pay at least some of the cost for their military defense. (Remember the Tea and Sugar Acts) from your school lessons? And, you surely remember the oft recounted events of the Boston Tea Party, when outraged New Englanders disguised unconvincingly as Indians threw cases of tea overboard rather than pay the taxes. Many more Americans resented the reliance on cloth (and metal goods) imported in English ships and woven increasingly in England’s factories. This was the very reason wearing “homespun” clothing became a badge of defiance worn by Americans -and also why the spinning wheel later became the iconic symbol of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Many Americans were predisposed to resist any sort of regulation, whether unfairly imposed or as a routine part of any governance. And, as expressed in numerous recent books, this tradition continues today. J.D. Vance in his popular best seller, Hillbilly Elegy (now a film) describes his family’s Scots Irish roots, as well as their Appalachian culture, fervent religiosity and the financial disaster they suffered when the coal mines of eastern Kentucky began to close.

A generational shift to factory jobs in neighboring Ohio offered employment but at the price of lost connections to family and mountain ways. Eventually, the new jobs vanished and Vance’s family found themselves cut off from the family network they knew back in the Kentucky hills-especially the core strength of Vance’s grandmother who anchored his own childhood. The new home became the Rust Belt as America’s industrial base crumbled away. Alcohol and drugs, unplanned teenage pregnancies, serial marriages and divorces and a pervasive apathy destroyed initiative and eroded values that had taken generations to refine.

I love this book for its honesty and for the admiration Vance has for his grandmother’s armor-plated devotion to family. Portrayed by the talented Glenn Close, we see why Vance benefitted from her toughness and her integrity. Vance also attributes his personal success to her, as well as to values instilled by his service in the military, where (as he clearly implies) the Scots Irish ethic prevailed-just as it did in his own root families.

After his service ends, displaying the toughness instilled by his grandmother, Vance gains admission to Ohio State University and earns a law degree at Yale. He lands a job with a top firm. Vance is as amazed as any of his family and friends. Why and how could this have happened? Hillbilly Elegy was inspired by Vance’s effort to answer that question. His modesty requires that he attributes his success to others-an inclination we might all do well to emulate.

So, Hillbilly Elegy strikes an inspiring chord with many readers with its clear assertion of the values of family, military service, delayed gratification, and self- discipline. (Is it insensitive to say these were once heralded as Anglo-Saxon qualities, before academics saddled WASPs -white, Anglo-Saxon protestants- with a reputation for tendencies toward repressed sexuality, greed, and rigid religious exclusivity?)

Hillbilly Elegy topped the New York Times Bestseller list in August of 2016 and was on the list for over a year. The book was an overwhelming hit with conservatives and traditionalists for good reason. No whining, no acceptance of the excuse of victimization, admiration for patriotism, the military and for self -discipline. In the film, Glenn Close, portraying Vance’s grandmother, says to a young Vance “You have to decide. Do you want to be somebody?” And the memoir’s unspoken answer is “Then take personal responsibility for your own destiny. This propelled Vance to rise from the crippling circumstances in which he grew up to join the Marines and graduate from Yale Law School.

Much more pronounced in the book is that Vance is carrying the burden and inspiration of generations of a family growing out of Scots Irish and Appalachian roots. And yet… attributing (in my view) authentic virtues to an ethnic and regional identity-the Scots Irish of Appalachia- is a bit strained. Nor was the wildly successful book well received by academic researchers. In fact, a strong collective retort by scholars of matters Appalachian is already in print.

With a contrarian tendency myself, I would argue that Scots Irish character can hardly be confined to the hoots and hollows of Appalachia -it seems to predominate in much of the deep south and along the Ohio Valley, as well as in the southwest. No matter. Hillbilly Elegy is the kind of Horatio Alger story Americans live for. It continues the Charles Dickens tradition of stories of orphans and foundlings lifted by fate, determination and benevolent “others” into the sunlight of comfort and friendship.

There is something to the Scots Irish version of American history. Resentful Ulster immigrants -perhaps a quarter of a million of them-flooded into America in the 18th century. The Carolina colony even paid a cash bonus for protestant settlers and promised lands that turned out to be in the north of the colony and contested by native people,  but also introducing a strong Scots Irish influence onto the southern frontier.

Thousands more settled in the Philadelphia region where they would continue their migration to western Pennsylvania (and the Ohio Valley) and southward, down the famous Great Wagon Road that took them into the valleys of western Virginia and the Carolinas, and finally into the expanding Georgia backcountry of the Ogeechee, Ocmulgee and Broad River territories.

If we can rely on historical markers, the Great Wagon Road ended at Augusta. The lower Appalachians, much of it occupied by the Cherokee, were not yet open to the Ulstermen. My own family investigations suggest that east central Georgia’s upper Coastal Plan and lower Piedmont were filled with Ulster Irish.

It is clear that the Ulstermen figured prominently in the American Revolution. Washington applauded their military efforts and British General Cornwallis blamed his defeat on them. Yet, it is also clear that the Scots Irish also fought on the British side. Families were often divided over the issue of outright rebellion.

Ulster family origins shaped many of the early leaders of our republic, most notably President Andrew Jackson. And if anyone ever built a bigger career on resentment than Jackson, it has escaped my attention. Still, the virtues that Vance praises in Hillybilly Elegy and which seem to have inspired many leaders of our republic over the centuries, are also values shared by many other ethnic groups. Attractive as it may be to attribute the most essential of American virtues to the Scots Irish, it cannot stand against the tide of evidence that the Scots Irish experience and influence is not unique, even as we must accept its importance which has been well established by scholars.

The rise of the Ulster Scots movement in our own times with its visiting delegations, a national society of descendants, and an intense insistence on the existence of an ancient ethnic identity, arose in part because of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, replete with assassinations, bombings and terrorism. The Belfast Accords settled much of the overt confrontation. During our visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland last year the border between the two was all but invisible. Casual interactions in Dublin and Belfast did not reveal animosity during our short stay. Now, as we are witnessing, Britain’s Brexit threatens a return to stiff borders and the economic integration of the two Irelands.

It seems likely to me that the inspiration for Vance’s idea that his family’s character came from its Scots Irish roots likely came from other, though less widely read, books on the subject such as Jim Webb’s Born Fighting; How the Scots Irish Shaped America (2005) and Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture ; Celtic Ways in the Old South (1988). Before that, there were miscellaneous articles in academic journals about Celtic influences in the Confederacy and a book stall full of accounts of the Scots Irish influence in the US military.

American history and culture are so infused with Irish blood, Irish thought and Irish religion that our own politics and sensibilities have been at times fields of conflict between the two Irelands—the Republic and Northern Ireland. Writers are on to something (and I say this playfully): a great marketing opportunity for their writing efforts. Irish factions have invested heavily in trying to curry favor in America. All this is understandable –a great portion of Americans have at least an emotional stake in the current state of Erin’s affairs.

In so many ways, the resentments growing out of Ireland’s history and the wave of emigrants who left there in the 18th century from the north, and those refugeeing from the starvation and despair of the Potato Famine in the 19th century have infused our own national story with the greatness of Ireland’s people, but also germinated seemingly endless resentments, which rightly or wrongly inspire political defiance and even extremism today. Is it fair to suggest that the Trump victory carried off by the “Silent Majority” against the “elitist” left occurred because of resentments that have become, over the long-haul, ingrained in our national character? Vance implied this in his memoir. But, certainly, the Irish are not the only immigrants who have become part of this melting pot of grievances. And, grievances are as characteristic of the politics of the Left as of the Right.