I came here to-night simply to excuse myself for not being able, as
requested, to read a paper which I had promised your committee on
“Immigration to the United States from the Province of Ulster in
Ireland.”
If I am still honored by your Society, I will be glad to read it at a
future meeting, with a view to showing not only the influence of this
immigration on the history of the United States, but the fact that these
immigrants considered themselves Irish without any qualifying clauses,
and were so regarded in America, England and Ireland.
Modern political exigencies are playing sad havoc with ethnology. If an
Irishman becomes distinguished at home or abroad, in field, forum,
market or shop, he is immediately made an Anglo-Saxon; but if he brings
up in the police court he is simply a common Irish Celt. The
“Anglo-Saxon” race is claiming everything good in the world, and they
are bent upon leaving not much of the world for anybody else.
It is very fashionable now to be an Anglo-Saxon, even if you had an
Irish father and a Russian mother. If by some divine miracle and
phenomenal transformation, all men and women with Celtic blood in their
veins could wake up in the morning with some startling demonstration of
the fact, such as green hair and yellow eyes, there would be frightful
consternation in the ranks of Anglo-Saxondom, even in the great city of
New York, and in some of the back settlements into which the first
immigrants from Ireland wandered, and where even their names have been
transformed.
If one could run all races other than the “Anglo-Saxon” out of the
United States it would not be worth England’s while to form an alliance
with what remained, and she would treat them in that kindly,
patronizing, contemptuous way that she does the ultra-loyal Canadians.
It needs no learned historian to show us the splendid record of the
Irish in America, nor how enduringly they have stamped their highest and
noblest racial impulses on every page of American history. Some of their
critics sneeringly point to the apparent fact that they have been almost
altogether too conspicuous on the field of military action, and more or
less lacking in the more patient and plodding ways of commerce and
business. They assert that they have attained more in the intellectual
diversions and pleasing arts of speech and hand, or in the mere drudgery
of unintelligent labor, rather than in those achievements in agriculture
and manufactures, which is said to be a marked characteristic of the
heavenly Anglo-Saxon.
This is gross libel on the Irishmen of America. We have here to-night at
our board, such a thoroughly representative business Irishman who in
vast enterprise, splendid achievement, industry, and dogged
perseverance, crowned with the highest success, can give the best
Anglo-Saxon in the states or England, in any venture from building
railroads to managing them, the sharpest competition of his life; and
yet Mr. John D. Crimmins of New York is but one of a splendid army of
men of Irish birth or descent who are in the very forefront of the great
industrial armies as captains and generals of those tremendous forces
which nowhere play so important a part as in the United States, and
which nowhere have competition among them more keen, nay, more deadly,
nor requiring higher talents and greater courage. Why, in this very
metropolis you cannot point to any great field of action—leaving out the
learned professions in which the Irish race is most markedly
conspicuous—in banking, manufactures, commerce, shipbuilding, and all
kinds of industrial and railroad enterprises, in which Irish names do
not appear in the directorates, fill the managers’ offices, plan and
execute the great battles of modern finance. I say we need not speak of
the learned professions, because there the keen wit, the bright, sharp
intellectuality, wonderful racial adaptability, breadth and grasp of
mind, and love of learning, have given them most commanding influence;
the same is true of congress, in legislatures, municipal bodies, and in
every court-house of the United States. The same is true of the
professions of medicine and teaching, and on the press, where they used
to say that Mr. Bennett’s pay-roll on the _Herald_ read like the roster
of the Fenian army. At any rate, there is no newspaper office in New
York where they have not conspicuous places.
Politically, I claim for them that impulsively, by reason of their
history and experiences, they are the very best of Americans. They
oppose entangling alliances because they know better than any one else,
by reason of a long, bloody, and painful history, how false are
international promises, how hypocritical and treacherous even the great
and seraphic Anglo-Saxon can be when he once gets the upper hand. Henry
II made with them the first Anglo-Saxon alliance, and Cromwell completed
it over the graves of murdered millions; over the ruins of castle,
cabin, and church, until its climax was reached when the greatest orator
of Ireland said that the instruments of government had been simplified
to “the tax gatherer and the hangman.”
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Irish element in the United States
should be the first to raise the cry of alarm against the plot to make
this great Republic in the very hour of its triumph a mere colonial
dependency instead of a regnant and invincible nation? For myself I
yield to no man living or dead in the quality of my Americanism. I came
to the Republic and have received with unstinted hand the usufruct of
its noble freedom, its generous institutions, its magnificent and
dazzling opportunities held out to him, however humble, who cultivates
the civic virtues, is able, industrious, courageous and honest. I yield
to the Republic no double allegiance. I stand for the United States in
its vast and tremendous interests here and everywhere against all other
countries’ fatherlands and motherlands, without stint, without
reservation or hesitation.
I am proud of my Irish birth, but above all things I glory in my
American citizenship. I glory in the Republic and the splendor of its
achievements, and I transmit to my descendants for a thousand years as a
priceless heritage, that exhibition of magnificent military courage
where American arms, in spite of the axioms of military science, in
spite of the handicaps under which they suffered, swept in magnificent
fury and heaven-born courage upon the fire-fringed hills of San Juan,
brave men dying gladly, to catch a glimpse of the blessed banner of the
great Republic; ours and theirs the glory of those ships which thundered
at Cervera, that lightened the gloom of barbarian Manila, and in those
ranks of the marines at Guantanamo, and the heroes at Santiago.
Who of Irish birth or descent can but read the rosters on sea and shore
with a discriminating eye, to find his heart aflame with pride at the
splendid and unanswerable percentage of men with the hot blood of the
Celt and the high patriotism of the American, and who, next to the flag
of our common country, revere the fact that they draw their lineage from
the historic island across the sea. Surely they were not all
Anglo-Saxons in name or race who went with Hobson in his grand and
heroic endeavor, which takes its place as outstripping the classic
legends of Greece and Rome. Surely no one will deny that the roster call
of the marines at Guantanamo and the army at Santiago fairly teems with
representatives of the historic Irish soldier.
The Sixty-ninth New York and Ninth Massachusetts would be far
outstripped in numbers by the thousands of units scattered throughout
our army and navy, regular and volunteer, for wherever the stars of the
Republic light the gloom of the battle-field, or war thunders on the
deep, there, his breast bared to her enemies, whoever they be, you find
the most loyal and valorous Americans in the sons of the expatriated
Irishman. While Anglo-Saxon statesmen may quibble in congress and
Anglo-Saxon schoolmen criticise in college, “Like lions leaping at a
fold when mad with hunger’s pang,” you will find in the forefront,
disdaining quibble and laughing at criticism, the hot tide of valor and
chivalry which, proud to be American, is not ashamed to be called Irish.
Out upon the bigots who would do it injustice! Defiance to those who
would deride its power or minimize its influence!
It asks no quarter in any field of industry, learning, or strife, and is
as great in peace as in war. If its more acknowledged glories are of the
more sanguinary fields when Mars sows in blood and night what Minerva
reaps in the dews and light of the morning, it is not because of any
undue pugnacity, any animal ferocity, but because the Irish Celt,
threatened with an extermination more cruel than that of our red
Indians, with the schoolhouse closed to his intellect, and the church to
his conscience, had to take down the stainless and invincible sword of
his fathers and become a universal soldier. In every land, from the
Shannon to the Tiber, from the Tiber to the Ganges, from the Ganges to
the Potomac, and from the Potomac to San Juan; on every battle-field
from Clontarf to Fontenoy, from Fontenoy to Waterloo, from Waterloo to
Marye’s heights, where the Irish brigade climbed steeps made slippery
with their blood; and from Fredericksburg to Santiago and Manila, Irish
valor has gleamed a star on the pages of universal history.