Irish Kilt?

[Zardoz]

Close, but no cigar. The "Scots-Irish" assimilated to American society long before the arrival of the "famine" or "Green" Irish in the mid-1840s, when the potato blight and political tensions as a result of the 1848 Revolutions drove many Southern Irish from Ireland across the sea. In fact, many of those "native" Americans who stereotyped, mocked and culturally oppressed the Irish were most likely of Ulster-Scots blood themsselves. Before the arrival of the "Green" Irish, those Scots-Irish that did maintain some semblance of ethnic identity did refer to themselves as "Irish", although as you mentioned, the Ulster Scots were only Irish in geographic residence, not necessarily in culture.

As I tell my classes, the Scots-Irish dropped their ethnicity very quickly, intermarrying with Germans and French Protestants (David Crockett is the most famous example of that mixture) to become a distinctly American culture. Ironically, it was the Scots-Irish who persecuted the Loyalist Highlanders & members of the British Army's Highland regiments during the Revolution.

Still sitting this one out, but wanted to say good stuff there Todd.