To discover that a gentleman today only has to brush his teeth, console his crying girlfriend, and barbeque with confidence would have terrified men like William Byrd II. Aside from not becoming a true gentleman, Byrd feared more than anything that he and his kind would become irrelevant in the New Colony’s future. He feared that all he had achieved to become a true gentleman, all his Greek and social climbing and hard-won backroom dealing, would be overwhelmed by the tide of immigrants whose mashed-up social customs would swallow up him and his friends. His class of elite and educated English gentlemen wouldn’t be needed or respected. I can almost see the beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he writes about the Scots-Irish.

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