fact that the assembly passed a law exempting him from arrests—for debt
it is supposed—for ten years, and commissioning him a captain in the
Colonial service. The supposition that Crogan was a spy in the service
of the French was based upon the idea that he was a Roman Catholic,
inasmuch as he was born in Dublin, Ireland. His loyalty was first
brought into question by Governor Sharpe, in December 1753, who wrote to
Governor Hamilton, informing him that the French knew every move for
defence made in the Colonies, and asked his opinion of Crogan. In
answer, Governor Hamilton said: “I observe what you say of Mr. Crogan;
and, though the several matters of which you have received information
carry in them a good deal of suspicion, and it may be highly necessary
to keep a watchful eye upon him, yet I hope they will not turn out to be
any thing very material, or that will affect his faithfulness to the
trust reposed in him, which, at this time, is of great importance and a
very considerable one. At present I have no one to inquire of as to the
truth of the particulars mentioned in yours but Mr. Peters who assures
me that Mr. Crogan has never been deemed a Roman Catholic, nor does he
believe that he is one, though he knows not his education, which was in
Dublin, Ireland, nor his religious profession.” To keep the Indians
loyal, he advanced many presents to them and the company of Indians he
commanded was fitted out at his own expense; and it was the attempt to
get what he advanced on that occasion that led to his quarrel with the
commissioners and his resignation.
From Philadelphia, Pa., he went to Onondago, in September, 1756, and
soon after was appointed deputy-agent, and again he took an active part
in Indian affairs. After the French had evacuated Fort Duquesne, in
1758, Crogan resided for a time in Fort Pitt. From there he went down
the river, was taken prisoner by the French, and taken to Detroit. Soon
after his liberation he went to New York, where he died in 1782.
Thus ended the career of George Crogan, who was an old acquaintance of
George Washington.
EXTRACTS FROM AMERICAN-IRISH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHIES.
BY DR. MICHAEL F. SULLIVAN.
The history of a people, like the history of the literature of a people,
depends upon the historian’s accumulation and verification of knowledge
and the manner in which this knowledge is presented to the reader.
It would be an extraordinary thing, indeed, if all writers of history
and biography were to speak and write the truth; it would still be a
most remarkable condition if many people would overcome their prejudices
and recognize the truth when they saw it.
It is lamentable to see how persons of the best intentions will let
themselves be deceived when they have taken a false position and try to
maintain it.
Some British and pro-British writers have taken a prejudiced position
into which they will admit only such truthful ingredients as meet their
views and shut out all the rest; just as much truth, as much sincerity,
as much justice, as will allow them to call themselves fair and
unbiased. It cannot be said that all act wittingly and purposely, but it
seems to be the favorite practice of many writers of American history
and biography to write events and conditions as they would like to have
had them occur rather than as they really were.
What real historian, or writer of historical truths, will deny to the
Celts the credit due them for the wonderful part taken by them in the
constructing, upbuilding and general welfare of our great country? What
people have done more than the warm-hearted and susceptible Celts, the
hereditary fervor of their patriotism, the sacrifices which they have
made and which—unchecked by defeat and disappointment, and hope
deferred—they are daily making for their country and every country of
their adoption; their Celtic veneration for ancient usages, and more
than Celtic tenacity of ancient recollections; above all, their still
unextinguished spirit of nationality and imperfect amalgamation even to
this day with English interests and English feeling, could not fail, one
would suppose, to find an echo in the heart of the most prejudiced
writer of history. England has not only stolen the country of the Celt,
but she has often stolen her genius. The biographical history of Ireland
cannot be contemplated without pride and satisfaction to every one who
feels an interest in her glory and sympathy with her sufferings.
Reduced to a condition of slavery such as no other nation on earth has
endured—her name a by-word—her miseries a mockery—herself the
amphitheatre upon which the dishonest ministers of England exhibited
their games of blood and rioted in drunkenness and corruption,—it is,
nevertheless, consoling to discover that from her condition she has
partially recovered and is not completely cursed, but that the master
spirits whom she produced may well take their stand beside the highest
minds of any other nation, whether in poetry or literature, in eloquence
or statesmanship, in camp or court.
Oppression, however it may debase the physical and mental energies of a
people, cannot thoroughly destroy them; those very periods that to the
ordinary observer seem less likely to be illuminated by distinguished
minds, genius has often most splendidly adorned.
Mrs. Stopford Green, in her book, “The Making and Undoing of Ireland,”
says: “There is no more pious duty to all of Irish birth than to help in
recovering from centuries of obloquy the men of noble birth, Irish and
Anglo-Irish, who built up the civilization that once adorned their
country.
“It is by the study of this history alone that Irishmen will find a just
pride restored and their courage assured. In this effort, however,
Irishmen are confronted with a singular difficulty.
[Illustration:
JOHN O’SULLIVAN, ESQ.,
Of New York City.
A Member of the Society.
]
“In no other country in the world has it been supposed the historian’s
business to seek out every element of political instability, every trace
of private disorder, every act of personal violence, every foreign
slander and out of these alone neglecting all indications of industry or
virtue to depict a national life.
“Irish annals are still in our own days quoted by historians as telling
merely the tale of a corrupted land,—feuds and battles, murderings and
plunderings; with no town or church or monastery founded, no law
enacted, no controversy healed by any judgment of the courts. If the
same method had been found for England, what an appalling story we
should have had of that mediæval time, of its land-thefts, its women
lifting, its local wars, the feuds handed from father to son with their
countless murders and atrocious devastating for generations whole
country sides.
“The Irish have long been famed for their love of learning. By their
missionaries they gave to the English the alphabet and the Christian
faith. When the English made returns by breaking the Irish schools and
destroying their libraries, they were still forced to recognize the
talents of the people—‘sharp-witted lovers of learning, capable of any
study to which they bend themselves,’ lovers of music, poetry and all
kinds of learning.”
Bancroft says, in Volume 5, in referring to the Irish in 1763: “Their
industry within the kingdom was prohibited or repressed by law, and then
they were calumniated as naturally idle. Their savings could not be
invested on equal terms in trade, manufactures or real property; they
were called improvident. The gates of learning were shut on them and
they were derided as ignorant. In the midst of privations they were
cheerful. Suffering for generations under acts which offered bribes to
treachery, their integrity was not debauched; no son rose against his
father, no friend betrayed his friend. Fidelity to their religion, to
which afflictions made them cling more closely, chastity, and respect
for the ties of family remained characteristics of the down-trodden
race.”
Gordon’s Civil War in Ireland speaks of the literature of Ireland as
follows: “The literature of Ireland has a venerable claim to antiquity;
for, as has been already mentioned, in the centuries immediately
following the introduction of Christianity, many writers arose, whose
works principally consist of lives of Saints, and works of piety and
discipline, presenting to the inquisitive reader many singular features
of the history of the human mind. The chief glory of the ancient Irish
literature, arises from the revival of the rays of science, after it had
almost perished in Europe, on the fall of Roman Empire in the west. The
Anglo-Saxons, in particular, derived their first illumination from
Ireland; and in Scotland, literature continued to be the special
province of the Irish clergy, ’till the thirteenth century.”
Greece and Egypt, in very remote antiquity, were seminaries of learning
to the rest of the world; and Ireland, in latter days, seems to have
answered the same description to the other nations of Europe. When the
ravages of the Goths and Vandals had desolated the improvements of
Europe, and reached also to a considerable extent on the African
continent, learning appears to have flourished in Ireland. Spencer says
it is certain that Ireland had the use of letters very anciently, and
long before England; he thought they were derived from the Phœnicians.
Bede speaks of Ireland as the great mart of literature, to which they
resorted from all parts of Europe. He relates that Oswauld, the Saxon
King, applied to Ireland for learned men to instruct his people in the
principles of Christianity. Camden says, it abounded with men of
splendid genius, in the ages when literature was rejected everywhere
else; according to him and others, who wrote at the same time, the
abbeys Luxieu in Burgundy, Roby in Italy, Witzburg in Frankland, St.
Gall in Switzerland, Malmsbury and Lindisfern in England, and Jona in
Scotland, were founded by Irish Monks. The Younger Scaliger, and others,
say, at the time of Charlemagne, and two hundred years before, almost
all the learned were of Ireland. The first professors in the University
of Paris were from this Island; and the great Alfred even brought
professors to his newly founded college of Oxford from this country. It
would be too tedious to enumerate the benefits diffused through various
parts of Europe, by the numbers of distinguished and learned men from
Ireland, who imparted the early lights of Science and of Christianity,
and founded monasteries in various parts of Britain, France and Italy.
At this day, the Patron Saints, as they are called, of several nations
on the continent, are acknowledged to be Irish; hence we may see, how
Ireland obtained the name of Sanctorum Patria. We have also the
testimony of venerable Bede, that, about the middle of the seventh
century, whole flocks of nobles and other orders of the Anglo-Saxons,
retired from their own country into Ireland, either for instruction, or
for an opportunity of living in monasteries of stricter discipline; and
the Scots (as he styles the Irish) maintained them, taught them, and
furnished them with books, without fee or reward; “a most honorable
testimony,” says Lord Lyttleton, “not only to the learning, but likewise
to the hospitality and bounty of that nation.” Dr. Leland remarks, “that
a conflux of foreigners to a retired Island, at a time when Europe was
in ignorance and confusion, gave peculiar lustre to this seat of
learning; nor is it improbable or surprising, that seven thousand
students studied at Armagh, agreeable to the accounts of Irish writers,
though the seminary of Armagh was but one of those numerous colleges
erected in Ireland, and the grand ruins of them, to this day, stand as
so many learned monuments of the ancient and literary fame of the
country. Ireland retained the name of Scotia, till so late as the
fifteenth century, with the addition of Major, or Vetus, to distinguish
it from Caledonia or Albania, that is, the present Scotland, which, in
the eleventh century, began to be called Scotia Minor, as deriving its
improvement immediately from hence. The ancient Scotch writers, of the
greatest repute, are so far from denying their Irish extraction, that
they seem to glory it; and King James I, in one of his speeches, boasts
of the Scottish dynasty being derived from that of Ireland.”
The dazzling array of Irish names by which the annals of America has
been graced is far more extensive than the ordinary observer would
suppose.
To some of the friendly and to all of the unfriendly a man to be Irish
must bear a pronounced Celtic name.
It is a fact from the most reliable authority that many Irish on coming
to this country adopted English names, many taking the names of colors
and trades. Dr. Thomas Dunn English says “they often took the names of
Black, Brown, Grey and Green, or as fancy may dictate.” He says “the
names were generally retained on this side of the Atlantic.” He also
adds: “In the eighteenth century as well as the latter part of the
seventeenth century, Philadelphia, then the greatest commercial port,
was the spot of the greatest debarkation of the Irish hosts. While many
remained in the east there was a time when the greatest portion pushed
their way into the western wilds where the land could be had for the
asking. They scattered themselves over the slopes of the great Allegheny
range and its various spurs and tributaries.”
From Londonderry in New Hampshire down to Coloraine in the far south,
Dr. English says he found many Celtic names changed with the “Macs” and
“O’s” dropped. He said: “If nevertheless all these names were blotted
out and their place taken by those of English or German sound the
character of the original settlement would be known by the prevalence of
certain words and survival of certain customs.”
Spencer, the historian, says: “Multitudes of laborers and husbandmen
from Ireland embarked for the Carolinas. The first colony of these
located in 1737 near Santee.” He also says “emigration to America was so
heavy as to show the depopulation of whole country districts in
Ireland.” Ramsey, the historian of the Carolinas, declares “that of all
the European countries none has furnished this province with so many
inhabitants as Ireland. Scarcely a ship,” he says, “sailed from any
Irish port for Charlestown that was not crowded.” All this, he declares,
occurred years and decades before the revolutions.
Jenkins, in his life of President Polk, says: “About the year 1735 two
large parties from Ireland sought the wilds of America, one by the
Delaware to Philadelphia and the other by Charlestown, South Carolina.”
New York World’s History of the United States says: “An Irish colony
under Ferguson settled in South Carolina in 1679.”
There was a combined movement of Celts, Catholic and Presbyterian and
Quakers to South Carolina and of all the colonies sent out by the
prolific isle none had greater Americans than the emigration between
1750–’70.
At any rate it may challenge comparison with any other—Jackson, Calhoun,
O’Kelly, O’Grady, Polk, Crockett, Houston, McDuffie, Adair, McKemy,
McWorter, O’Farrell, McNairy. All these are of Irish extraction and
still (some of them Americanized by dropping the O’ or the Mc) adorn the
annals of their states or nation. If anyone had said, in 1692, that a
British parliament could succeed in exiling thousands of Catholic and
Protestant Irish in such a way as to make them fight side by side with
Catholic Frenchmen and non-sectarian colonists against the United
Kingdom he would have been denounced as a fool. The wise men would have
told him that legislative folly might do wonders, but it could not work
miracles. Yet that is just what parliament accomplished, for scarcely
was the ink dry on the treaty of Limerick (which provided that Catholics
should enjoy in Ireland such rights as they had enjoyed in the reign of
Charles II) when it was violated by a series of laws that now make
honest Englishmen blush. It is needless to repeat the black details.
Says one British writer: “The laws were so many and so atrocious that an
Irishman could scarcely draw a full breath without breaking a law.”
Grimshaw’s History of the United States, 1821, says: “Philadelphia in
1683, which was begun on the site of the Indian village, Coquanoc,
derives its name from a city in Asia Minor celebrated in sacred history
for its having been the seat of an early Christian church. During the
first twelve months of its foundation about a hundred houses were
erected and, since that period, it has received a continual accession of
inhabitants from Ireland and Germany.” It also says: “In the interval
between 1730 and the period when this history will relinquish the
distinct colonial proceedings to conduct the narrative of a more sublime
and awful period when individual interests combine and move forward with
a unity of action there was an annual influx of emigrants. These were
principally from Germany and Ireland. The Irish and German people at an
early day brought the useful arts and manufactures into Pennsylvania.
The Irish and French emigrants had enjoyed a large share of civil
liberty and boldly contended for total enfranchisement from regal
domination.”
Grimshaw says, in relating an incident of the war of 1812: “Scenes of
the most distressing kind were occurring in the Chesapeake. It was now
that Admiral Cockburn was satiating his unmanly and unsoldierlike
propensities in a species of warfare at once reflecting dishonor. At
first his depredations were directed against the farm houses and seats
of private gentlemen. These were plundered, their owners in the rudest
manner insulted, and cattle which could not be removed were wantonly
destroyed.
“Georgetown and Fredericktown were destroyed. The people of Frenchtown,
after firing a few shots, fled on the enemy’s approach with the
exception of an old Hibernian, named O’Neil. This heroic citizen
continued the battle alone, loading a piece of artillery and firing it
himself, until, by recoiling, it ran over his leg and wounded him
severely; and even then, exchanging his piece of ordnance for a musket,
and limping away, he still kept up a retreating fight with the advanced
column of the British. He was, at length, made prisoner, but soon
afterwards released.” Holmes (Annals of America) says: “From Dec. 31,
1728, to Dec. 31, 1729, there entered the port of Philadelphia 5,655
Irish immigrants, 243 Germans, 267 English and Welsh and 43 Scotch.”
Rev. S. F. Hotchkin, in Penn’s Greene Country Towne, writes: “In 1729
Miss Elizabeth McGawley, an Irish lady, brought hither tenantry to the
Dickson property between Nicetown and Frankford and had a chapel there.
A priest named Michael John Brown was buried in a stone enclosure not
far away. Roman Catholic services may be traced, as Watson says, to a
letter of Penn to Logan, in 1708, wherein he mentions that Mass had been
celebrated in Philadelphia and that the services were held in a frame
building on Cor. of Front and Walnut Sts.”
The _New York Sun_, in commenting on Galletin, says his sponsors were
John Smilie, Blair McClenachan, and Thomas McKean, sturdy leaders of the
strong Philadelphia Irish colony of that era, 1789.
John Sanderson’s Biography (1823) of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, says: “In Pennsylvania the Quakers reared the most durable
monuments of their fame, and advanced of their most elevated grade the
interests of their order. The freedom, liberality and benevolence of
their policy invited among them, as well from the adjacent provinces as
from Europe, a numerous population; and the industry of the German, the
activity and enterprise of the Irishman joined to the pre-existing order
and economy of this province, raised it to a sudden height of prosperity
which has been seldom equalled in the history of nations.”
Drake, in his Landmarks of Boston, says: “About 1718 a number of
colonists arrived from Londonderry, Ireland, bringing with them the
manufacture of linen and the implements used in Ireland.”
Early records of the Town of Derryfield, now Manchester, N. H.,
1751–’82, says: “On Sept. 23, 1751, at the call of John McMurphy, the
proprietors, free-holders and inhabitants of Derryfield gathered at the
inn of John Hall for the purpose of laying the foundation of
self-government. Its early inhabitants were made up of Irish, who had
begun to settle within its bounds as early as 1718, mostly near Amoskeag
Falls. About 100 families settled there at that time.”
Harris’ Memorials to Oglethorpe (1841) says: “Governor Oglethorpe,
founder of the colony of Georgia’s Mother was Elenora Wall, an
Irishwoman of Rogane, Ireland.” Charles Dempsey was an able assistant to
Governor Oglethorpe and did much to settle differences between Florida
and Georgia. Under Governor Oglethorpe, as a military officer, was a
Patrick Sutherland. That there were thousands of Irish settled not only
in New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, but Maine,
Virginia, Massachusetts and New York, in colonial days, may be attested
if we are to believe Prendergast in his book, “Cromwellian Settlement of
Ireland,” he says: “Thousands of Irish were sold into a kind of slavery
by Cromwell to Massachusetts and the West India Islands from Ireland.
Between 1651 and 1655 over 6,000 boys and girls, namely from the south
of Ireland, were shipped to those two ports.” It seems difficult for
some writers to give credit and justice to a people against whom they
have an unwarranted prejudice—prejudice stimulated by ignorance of facts
or malice.
After the quotations from the most reliable authorities as to the early
settlement of America in colonial days by the Irish, it is to be
wondered at which of the afore-mentioned causes impelled the president
of a great university to give credit to other peoples in the settlement
and upbuilding of America and omit the important part taken by the
Irish.
Was it malice or ignorance that caused a gentleman holding one of the
two highest positions in the United States government from
Massachusetts, to give the Irish but partial credit in his paper,
“Distribution of Ability in the United States,” published in the
_Century_ Magazine? The honorable gentleman quotes Appleton’s
Encyclopedia of Biography for his authority, which, if closely examined,
it will be found that his time or vision must have been exceedingly
limited. A careful examination of the above authority will prove malice
or ignorance or delegating the examination to some Celtophobe of the
Goldwin Smith stamp. These writers can be truly accused of carelessness
or credulity. The colonial settlers from Ireland did not claim to be
anything but Irish,—God had not created at that time the new breed of
higher animals, the Scotch-Irish.
Mr. James McMillen of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the _New York Sun_, refers to
an article of Dr. Lyman Abbot in the _North American Review_, in which
“he (Dr. Abbot) declares that the great forces which contribute to our
civilization in this country are not Celtic, Slavic, Mongolian or
African, but Anglo-Saxon.” Mr. McMillen adds: “From the very beginning
we have been in the front ranks with our Anglo-Saxon brethren and will
not be crowded out at this late day by any authority who would place us
in the same category with the African, Mongolian or Slavic so long as we
continue to demonstrate our equality if not superiority to the
Anglo-Saxon.” The Abbots, Lodges, Eliots, Fisks and other minor
satellites will find it an impossibility to eliminate from the pages of
American history the absolutely necessary part taken by the Celt in the
originating and perpetuating American liberty, institutions and ideals.
The misinformers of history should stop to consider that civilization is
not made up only of heat or cold, light or darkness, but a community of
human beings, with likes and dislikes, with hopes and aspirations, with
hearts beating with passion or sentiment and while human peculiarities
are modified to a certain degree by condition and environment, they are
not wholly changed. This will apply to the early Irish and English
settlers of America. It would be a very uncertain belief to suppose that
the thousands of Irish who settled in America in colonial days to escape
the lauded Anglo-Saxon civilization, would tamely submit to a
continuance of it in this broad land of liberty and opportunities.