With tributes like these from the men who were associated with John
Sullivan in the struggle for independence, as well as from their
descendants who participated in the dedication of the monument to
his memory, we, who are members of the American-Irish Historical
Society, can well be proud of the character and the services of
Maj.-Gen. John Sullivan.
Edward J. Brandon, Esq., city clerk of Cambridge, read the following
paper:
On a certain April morning, one hundred and twenty-two years ago,
Samuel Adams prophetically remarked, “What a glorious morning is
this!” and, as I stand here, I cannot restrain the feeling that the
shade of that illustrious and honored American makes use of the
expression with much greater emphasis to-day.
For the accomplishments of his country during the past four
generations, her marvelous strides in acquiring and attaining a
potent position among the world’s nations, the tremendous
development of her magnificent natural resources, the genius and
perseverance displayed by her children, the prosperity and
importance of her institutions, the advance of her people in
culture, the triumph of her principles of democracy, with its lesson
to the world that “the people can be trusted with their own,” are
surely causes for congratulation and satisfaction. And all this
reality dates from an incident comparatively slight in the world’s
history, but which is an important epoch in the story of America.
The period of resistance by the Colonies to British tyranny
antedates April 19, 1775, by many years, but the culmination of a
series of oppressive acts was realized on that day, and in the
exciting events preceding and following the fight at Concord and
Lexington, the town of Cambridge acted well its part, and
contributed its blood and treasure to the common weal.
All Cambridge knows and feels a glow of patriot’s pride in the
Declaration of Independence of the people of Cambridge, made months
in advance of the Declaration of the Continental Congress, when the
town instructed its representative that if the Provincial Congress
should for the safety of the Colonies declare them independent of
the Kingdom of Great Britain, “we, the said inhabitants, will
solemnly engage with our lives and fortunes to support them in the
measure.”
In all the preliminary work of the period Cambridge was active and
conspicuous, and the animosity aroused by the opposition of her
citizens doubtless inspired the hatred of the retreating soldiery of
Britain, and caused the shocking brutality which has been told and
so often retold. But the history of the time records all these
events, and it is needless for me to recite them.
The British troops landed at Lechmere Point on the night of April
18, and marched across the marshes to the Milk Row Road in
Charlestown, now Somerville, thence by Beech Street and the present
Massachusetts Avenue to Menotomy, Lexington, and Concord. Captain
Thatcher and his Cambridge men were among the first to rally for the
public safety, and the militia of Cambridge improved the opportunity
to attest its loyalty to principle. The muster roll shows that they
marched on the alarm, and did service as far as Concord.
Paige, Cambridge’s historian, tells us that from Lexington line to
Beech Street the passage of the British troops in retreat was
“through a flame of fire.” Despite the fact that the conflict of
this day is generally known as Concord Fight or Lexington Battle,
the carnage in Cambridge was greater than in any other place,
greater than in all others combined; for, according to Rev. Samuel
Abbott Smith, in his address at West Cambridge, “at least twenty-two
of the Americans, and more than twice that number of the British,
fell at West Cambridge.”
Of the fierceness of the conflict we can to-day present ocular
proof. The large number of bullet holes in the house then owned by
Jacob Watson, some of which may be seen at this time, is one
indication of the amount of fighting done in Cambridge; while the
spoliation of Cooper’s Tavern in Menotomy and the Memorial stones
all along the line of march teach the heat and bitterness of the
strife. In our ancient burial ground, by which Lord Percy’s
battalion marched to the relief, will be found a neat granite
monument over the remains of John Hicks, William Marcy, and Moses
Richardson, and in memory of these and of Jason Russell, Jabez
Wyman, Jason Winship, buried at Menotomy—men of Cambridge who fell
in defense of the liberty of the people.
These things are the inspiration which the Cambridge boy and girl
breathe at every step, impelling influences to love of country and
fearlessness in her defense.
The _Journal of the Provincial Congress_ estimates the loss of
property in Lexington at £1761, in Cambridge at £1202, and in
Concord at £274.
But when we consider these exciting events of that memorable day and
read the stories of individual heroism, we feel a particular pride
that our race was permitted to be a factor in the great result. It
would be to us a matter of sincere regret if Ireland, who had
contributed so much that was noble and sublime to the military
history of other nations, had been deprived of the opportunity to
manifest her sympathy by active participation in the “Lexington
Fight.” More especially as the feeling of the people of Ireland was
well known to Britain and Britain’s rulers, as is evident from the
records of the House of Parliament in 1775, where it is of record
that Governor Johnstone, in the debate at the opening of the session
used these words:
“I maintain that the sense of the best and wisest men of the country
is on the side of the Americans; that three to one of the people of
Ireland are on their side; that the soldiers and sailors feel an
unwillingness to service; that you will never find the same exertion
of spirit in this as in other wars. I am well informed that the four
field officers in the four regiments now going from Ireland have
desired leave to retire or sell out.”
Again, Mr. George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of
Washington, says that Ireland contributed men to the Continental
Army at the rate of 100 to 1 of any nation before the coming of the
French. General Lee—Light Horse Harry—said that one-half of the
Continental Army was derived from Ireland. It is an undoubted fact
that two hundred and fifty soldiers served in the Revolutionary War
who bore the Christian name of Patrick. It is also undoubted that
the rolls of the soldiers who served at Bunker Hill contained over
one hundred and fifty typical Irish names. Verplank referred to the
services of Irishmen in the Revolutionary War in these words: “Both
in that glorious struggle for independence and in our more recent
contest for American rights, England’s penal laws gave to America
the support of hundreds of thousands of brave hearts and strong
arms.” I might repeat many more instances did the time permit.
Sufficient to say that the opportunity was accorded to Ireland’s
sons to do glorious work in the first conflict of the Revolution.
Cullen says: “The Irish came into the full light of colonial history
at Lexington and Concord. The cry of Paul Revere roused them to take
their share in the defense of the common cause. Among them was Hugh
Cargill, the Ballyshannon man. To his prompt response Concord owed
the safety of her records.”
Rev. Mr. Maccarty is heard from in Worcester on that eventful
morning of April 19, 1775. Lincoln’s history of Worcester states
that as the minutemen were paraded on the green, under Capt. Timothy
Bigelow, a fervent prayer was offered up by Rev. Mr. Maccarty, after
which they took up their line of march.
“Another prominent name in the accounts of Concord and Lexington is
Dr. Thomas Welsh, who was army surgeon to the patriots. He it was
who met brave Dr. Joseph Warren as he rode through Charlestown at
about 10 o’clock on the morning of that April day.”
With the evidence of participation indisputable, cannot we of Irish
lineage feel the glory of this day as our own right, purchased by
the self-sacrificing effort of our predecessors?
And can we not, in fullest measure, in dwelling on the great and
famous events of April 19, 1775, exclaim with America’s noble son,
“Thank God, I also am an American!”
Cullen (pp. 86, 88) gives the following names found on the rolls of
minutemen at that period:
Joseph Burke,
Richard Burke,
Daniel Carey,
Joseph Carey,
Peter Carey,
Patrick Carroll,
Joseph Carroll,
Cornelius Cockran,
Daniel Connors,
William Connors,
James Dempsey,
Philip Donahue,
Joseph Donnell,
John Donnelly,
Andrew Dunnigan,
John Farley,
Michael Farley,
John Flood,
William Flood,
John Foley,
Matthew Gilligen,
Richard Gilpatrick,
James Gleason,
Daniel Griffin,
Joseph Griffin,
John Hacket,
Joseph Hacket,
John Haley,
John Kelly,
Patrick Kelly,
Peter Kelly,
Richard Kelly,
Stephen Kelly,
Daniel Lary,
John McCarty,
Michael McDonnell,
Henry McGonegal,
John McGrah,
Daniel McGuire,
Patrick McKeen,
John McMullen,
John Madden,
Daniel Mahon,
James Mallone,
John Mahoney,
John Murphy,
Patrick Newjent,
Patrick O’Brien,
Richard O’Brien,
Daniel Shay,
John Shea,
John Walsh,
Joseph Walsh.
Joseph Smith, Esq., of Lowell, read the following paper on “The Irishman
Ethnologically Considered.”
It is almost as hopeless a task to define an Irishman as it is to
give the dimensions of a perfume; for the Irishman is as evasive and
delusive, as pervasive and variable in type and character as the
sweetness rising from the glowing bed of flowers.
If this society is to have a logical and reasonable plea for
existence, if its title of American-Irish is to mean anything, we
must reach some solid basis upon which to build our fabric; we must
agree upon an acceptable definition of what is an Irishman.
This is what I shall try to do rather than attempt to show the
ethnical components that enter into the Irishman. I have gone past
the point in my speculations and theories on the Irishman where I
place much stress upon the racial elements that go to make the Irish
nation. We must start with these facts—the race and the nation are
two distinctly different things; the terms Celtic and Irish are not
synonymous.
I will state, so as to avoid the polemics of ethnology, just a few
facts upon which all people are agreed, to explain why I attach so
little importance to the merely racial elements that go to make up a
nation. The islands of Ireland and Great Britain were at one time
peopled by the one race which was known variously as the Celtic,
Cymric, and Gaelic. By emigration, conquest, settlement, slavery,
and intermarriage, and all those causes that mix races, Dane, Norse,
German, Norman-French, Dutch, French, Walloon, and Flemish were
mingled and intermingled with the original race, the constituent
elements varying with time, place, and circumstances. So we have
to-day in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England four distinct
peoples different in characteristics, temperaments, thought, and
methods, peoples made up practically from the very same elements. As
the different sections of Great Britain are separated by purely
artificial frontiers, they do not differ as profoundly as do the
people of Ireland from those of the neighboring island. We observe
in this republic people who claim a direct descent from English and
other stocks producing a people as widely separated in thought,
ideals, and physical appearance, and other distinctive features from
the stock of the old countries as the Russian is from the Spaniard.
It is clear to me that there are other and more potent elements that
make and differentiate peoples than mere racial admixtures.
The Irish, though speaking the English tongue and living under laws
foreign to the instincts of the people, are a nation apart from the
English, hating intensely the tie that binds them, out of sympathy
with English ideas, ambitions, religions, and methods; and yet they
are both the product of the same racial elements, the alleged
preponderance of the Celt in the Irish being largely a matter of
doubt and speculation.
What is it, then, that makes this tremendous difference in the two
nations? What were the forces that were at work to produce from the
same ingredients such profoundly different results? That is the
question we must answer; and in answering it we will reach the basic
idea of this society. Let me try and answer it in my way, and
endeavor to show as simply as possible what an Irishman is.
There are in England as well as in America, among that class that
for lack of a better term we must call Celtophobes, those who have
an original if unsatisfactory and unscientific way of answering this
question which adds to the accumulation of their stolen laurels and
seems to afford them much satisfaction. If an Irishman break the
record in science, art, literature, or any department of human
activity, he is at once classed as an Englishman in England, an
American in America; if, however, he merely break the Decalogue, the
law, a bank, or his mother’s heart, he must perforce be an Irishman.
This differentiation will not do for us, however.
There are some things we must remember, for our work has to bear the
closest scrutiny and the most searching criticism.
The characteristics which we deem essentially Irish are not
distinctly Irish; they are merely more widely distributed among the
Irish. Wit, humor, poesy, melancholy, loyalty to faith and
fatherland, patience under trial and hardship, daring in adventure,
valor in battle,—these are found in all lands, among all peoples,
though the Irish have displayed them so conspicuously in all the
centuries that some, aye, many of our own people have come to regard
them as exclusively theirs. While good blood will tell and bad, we
must look to other things, we must consider other causes than race
and blood, if we are to understand the workings of a mysterious
Deity and learn how he makes nations and differentiates peoples.
The crude ore lies in the mines of the hills all over the earth,
potential in its possibilities, yet heavy, dull, inert, awaiting the
day when man shall dig it from its hiding place, try it in the fires
of the furnace, beat it on the anvil and transform it into the
polished rail that ties together the ends of civilization, that will
shape it into the massive engine that carries the fruits of industry
and commerce to the uttermost parts of the world, that moulds it
into the type and press that spreads intelligence and frees the
soul, and that fashions it into the sword that frees the slave. And
as the ore, so is man; he must be tried in the fires to be re-made
for the work he is to do. The elements lie everywhere; circumstances
and conditions weld and mould him into nations. He may creep on into
the centuries dull, heavy, oppressed, carrying the thrall of the
master, content that he shall eat and drink and sleep in the peace
of ignorance, content that his master shall do his thinking and
fighting, heedless who the master is, for the hands of all are
heavy; taking his religion and his lot from him who rules and
starves him.
Others there are who have lived for centuries watching the tide of
civilization and the higher life sweep by them, too hotly engaged in
the struggle of life and death to snatch the prizes as they go by.
Such a land for the long centuries has been Ireland. Seven hundred
years has Ireland felt the edge of the sword, and for seven
centuries she has shown the naked breast and empty hand to the
oppressor, beaten but unsubdued.
Into the fires of hate and oppression, into the hell of battle and
persecution, into the _inferno_ of famine, misgovernment, robbery,
torture, and all the evils that cold, deliberate malice and
wickedness could invent, Celt and Saxon, Norman and French, Dane and
Norse, Englishman and Scotchman were thrown, to be fused and
mingled, that, in the cooling, God might draw from the ashes the
Irishman.
In all those long dark centuries his courage never failed, his hope
never dimmed, his faith in God never faltered; he never acknowledged
the right of might; he accepted nothing from the man who boasted
himself the conqueror of him who is to-day unconquered; he believed
the day would come, and it is coming, when the forces of evil would
sink beneath the scorn of the world.
In this terrible school the Irishman was made; here was learned the
infinite patience of his kind; here was bred that mental alertness,
that wit and humor, tinged with the melancholy the world calls
typical; here he drank into his blood the courage and flame and
battle, that marches him to death with a song and a laugh; here
every fiber and tissue of his elemental parts were made over, and
upon the green sod, that blood-soaked soil, he preserved the virtues
of the man who lives with God and nature.