Immigration irish 02
Presentation 25: (23 slides)
Title: Irish Immigration
Slide 1:
Kilkelly
In 1983, folk singer Peter Jones found a bundle of letters. They had been written to his great grandfather by HIS father (that is, Joness great great grandfather) 130 years earlier, after his great grandfather left the small village of Kilkelly in County Mayo. Jones used these letters to write this song.
Slide 2:
From Harpers Weekly: "The balance of trade with Great Britain seems to be still against us. 630 paupers arrived at Boston in the steamship Nestoria, April 15th, from Galway, Ireland shipped by the British Government." The Irish vessel is labeled "Poor House from Galway." The smaller vessel to the left is marked with the words, "From New York. The Dynamite."
image: title: A "Coffin Ship"
Slide 3:
Thousands Are Sailing (ca.1850)
Song
You brave Irish heroes where'er you may be
I pray, stand a moment and listen to me
Your sons and fair daughters are all going away
And thousands are sailing to AmericaySo good luck to those people and safe may they land
They are leaving their country for a far distant strand
They are leaving old Ireland, no longer can stay
And thousands are sailing to AmericayNow the night before leaving they are bidding good-bye
And it's early next morning their hearts give a sigh
They turn, kiss their mothers and then they will say
"Farewell, dear old father, we must now go away
Slide 4:
Song (cont.)
Oh I pity the mother who rears up the child
And likewise the father who labors and toils
To try to support them, he will work night and day
And when they are reared up they will go awaySo good luck to those people and safe may they land
They are leaving their country for a far distant strand
They are leaving old Ireland, no longer can stay
And thousands are sailing to Americay
Slide 5:
From a Montreal newspaper: On the authority of the Board of Health we are enabled to state that they were allowed to ship in numbers two or three times greater than the same vessels would have presumed to carry to a United States port. The worst horrors of the slave trade which it is the boast of the ambition of this empire to suppress at any cost have been reenacted in the flight of British subjects from their native shores. In only ten of the vessels that arrived at Montreal in July, four from Cork and six from Liverpool, out of 4,427 passengers, 804 had died on the passage [18.2 percent], and 847 [19.1 percent] were sick on their arrival; that is, 847 were visibly diseased, for the result proves that a far larger number had in them the seeds of disease.
From the Canadian National Board of Health: "The Larch reported this morning from Sligo, sailed with 440 passengers, of whom 108 [24.5 percent] died on the passage, and 150 were sick [34.1 percent]. The Virginius sailed with 496 -- 158 died on the passage [ 31.9 percent}, 186 were sick [42.3 percent], and the remainder landed feeble and tottering -- the captain, mates, and crew were all sick. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a mercy compared to the holds of these vessels.
Slide 6:
Below Decks on a Coffin Ship
From a Montreal newspaper: More than a hundred thousand souls have flown from the very midst of the calamity into insufficient vessels, scrambling for a footing on a deck and a berth in a hold, committing themselves to these worse than prisons, while their frames have been wasted with ill-fare and their blood infected with disease. They have fought for months of unutterable wretchedness against the elements without and pestilence within, giving almost hourly victims to the deep, landing at length on shores already terrified and diseased, consigned to encampments of the dying and of the dead, spreading death wherever they roamed, and having no other prospect before them than a long continuance of these horrors in a still farther flight across forests and lakes under a Canadian sun and a Canadian frost .
image: etching of people crowded onto a ship.
Slide 7:
The Green Fields of America
song:
So pack up your seastores consider it no longer
Ten dollars a week isn't very bad pay
With no taxes or tithe to devour up your wages
When youre on the green fields of Amerikay.
Farewell to the groves of shillelagh and shamrock.
Farewell to the wee girls of old Ireland all round.
And may their hearts be as merry as ever I could wish for.
As far away o'er the ocean I'm bound.
Oh, my father is old and my mother quite feeble;
To leave their own country it would grieve their heart sore,
Oh the tears down their cheeks in great drops they are rolling
To think they must die upon some foreign shore.
Slide 8:
song (cont.)
The sheep are all run and the looms are lying idle
The handymans gone and the winders of creels,
And away o'er the ocean, go journeyman tailors
And fiddlers that play out the old mountain reels
Ah and I mind the time when old Ireland was flourishing,
And most of her tradesmen did work for good payAh, but since our manufactufactories have crossed the Atlantic
It's now we must follow on to Amerikay.
And now to conclude and to finish my story
If e'er a friendless Irishman chances my way
With the best in the house I will treat him, and welcome him
Far away on the green fields of Amerikay.
Slide 9:
US Nativist Objections to Irish Immigrants
List:
Item: Religion: Catholic.Item: Language: Gaelic.Item: Social Status: Destitute (highly urban + alcohol + crime + disease.)- Sub-Item: Irish immigrants remained in port cities although they were primarily rural people. They could not afford to leave the city.Item: Youth. (96 percent were 35 or under; majority were male.)Item: Labor: Took (unskilled) jobs away from native born Americans. (Supposedly.)Item: Increased taxes for governmental agencies.
Slide 10:
Xenophobia (fear of strangers), a different culture and a lack of opportunity all contributed to negative perceptions of the Irish on the part of native born Americans.The Irish fill our prisons and our poor houses. Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country." Chicago Post Editorial, 1851
image: title: the mortar of assimilation the and one element that won't mix
Liberty stirring a mix of people in a mortar labeled 'citizenship' with the Irishman at odds with the rest.
Slide 11:
The Irish in Popular ImageryBy 1860, 1.5 million Irish immigrants lived in the US.
image: St. Patrick's Day 1867. Illustration showing caricatures of Irishmen attacking police with clubs. Text reads 'rim' 'blood' 'Irish riot' 'The Day We Celebrate'.
Slide 12:
New York Citys Five Points District ca. 1850
Many Irish immigrants crowded into slums in New Yorks Five Points District and South Boston.
image: illustration of New York's Five points District
Slide 13:
The Five Points District in New York, ca. 1860
image: another period illustration of an intersection in the district
Slide 14:
The Irish and Political Machines
List:
Item: PoliticiansDemocratsused the new Irish immigrants to support them in in office.Item: Distributed food, clothing, etc. in return for votes.Item: Also distributed political appointments.Item: Political machines also generated political appointments.Item: In 1855, about one-third New York City's policemen were Irish immigrants.
Slide 15:
Responses to Discrimination
List:
Item: Catholic Societies. Item: Benevolent Societies.Item: Gangs. (in all large cities, esp. US.)Item: Some municipal/volunteer relief. Item: Emigrant Societies.Item: Prisons.
image 1: Three Irishmen standing in front of a series of handbills
image: illustration of a gang fight or riot
Slide 16:
The Irish and the Civil War
List:
Item: More than 150,000 Irish immigrants in the Union Army.Item: Thomas Meaghers New Yorks 69th was the most famous.Item: Made up of Irish immigrants from New York City, Chicago, Boston and other cities. - sub-Item: Economic reasons.- sub-Item: Political reasons.
image 1: Battle Standard of the 69th
image 2: portrait of Thomas Meagher
Slide 17:
The 69th and other Irish brigades were raised as units. The 69th was a militia unit that preceded the Civil War.
image 1: handbill announcing a war and recruitment meeting for the benefit of the Irish brigade.
image 2: handbill for a meeting of Corcoran's Irish Legion
Slide 18:
image: advertisement for Joe English, Irish and comic songester
The Irish Volunteer. From Joe Englishs Songster, 1862
song:
My name is Tim McDonald, I'm a native of the Isle,
I was born among old Erin's bogs when I was but a child.
My father fought in " 'Ninety-eight," for liberty so dear;
He fell upon old Vinegar Hill, like an Irish volunteer.
Chorus: Then raise the harp of Erin, boys,
the flag we all revere-We'll fight and fall beneath
its folds, like Irish volunteers!
When I was driven from my home by an
oppressor's hand,
I cut my sticks and greased my brogues, and
came o'er to this land.
I found a home an many friends, and some that I
love dear;
Be jabbers! I'll stick to them like bricks and an
Irish volunteer.
Slide 19:
song (cont.)
Chorus: Then fill your glasses up, my boys, and drink a hearty cheer,
To the land of our adoption and the Irish volunteerNow when the traitors in the south commenced a warlike raid,
I quickly then laid down my hod, to the devil went my spade!
To a recruiting-office then I went, that happened to be near, And joined the good old Sixty-Ninth like an Irish volunteer.The fill the ranks and march away!no traitors do we fear;Well drive them all to blazes, says the Irish volunteer.When the Prince of Wales came over here, and made a hubbaboo,
Oh, everybody turned out, you know, in gold and tinsel too;
But then the good old Sixty-ninth didn't like these lords or peers--
They wouldn't give a damn for kings, the Irish volunteers!
We love the land of Liberty, its laws we will revere,
"But the divil take nobility!" says the Irish volunteer!
Chorus--We love the land...