Footnote 7:
Published originally in _Munsey’s Magazine_, New York, April, 1906.
A certain green isle in a northerly sea is the historic home of the
Irish people, but the present address of at least two thirds of the
scattered race is “United States of America.” Boston, not Belfast nor
Dublin, is now the greatest Irish city in the world; and the
overwhelming majority of Irishmen who have risen to places of
distinction have done so under the Stars and Stripes.
The historian who shall do full justice to the Irish branch of the human
family has not yet appeared, either in the United States or elsewhere.
Consequently, there are few races, if any, which have been so
persistently misunderstood and undervalued. Even in this country, where
such a mistake is least excusable, there has been a tendency in some
quarters to regard the Irish as merely an element of the rank and file.
The truth is that they have contributed their share of leaders and
pioneers in almost every line of progress.
_At least seven of our presidents_ have had more or less of Irish blood
in their veins. Jackson, Buchanan and Arthur were the sons of Ulster
parents; and the first American ancestor of Polk was an Irish immigrant.
Monroe and McKinley were more remotely related to the “fighting race.”
The latter, it is well known, was fond of saying, “We Irish.” Roosevelt,
also, had several Hibernian twigs on his family tree. This, in itself,
is an amazing record of Celtic leadership—to have helped to mold the
character of seven American presidents out of twenty-five.
In the making of America, the Irish have been structural. No other word
represents their influence so well. In the clearing of forests, the
digging of canals, the building of railroads, and the extension of
commerce, our civilization owes an incalculable debt to Irish hands and
Irish heads.
In the traits of our national character, too, we Americans are all more
Irish than we realize. Our versatility and buoyancy, our quickness of
initiative, our free and unconventional ways, and the sporting instinct
that leads us to take chances and beat records, are a few of the
evidences of an Irish strain in our blood.
If the handiwork of the Irish were painted green, the average American
city would be splashed on all sides with emerald hues. Yet there are few
who are aware of this, even among the Irish themselves. A New Yorker,
for example, may rise in the morning, bathe in water that comes from the
Croton dam, built by James Coleman, ex-president of the Friendly Sons of
St. Patrick; breakfast on Cudahy bacon; then take the subway, built by
John B. McDonald, past the new College of the City of New York, built by
Thomas Dwyer, to his office in a skyscraper built by John D. Crimmins,
where he will cable to Alaska over a line laid by David Lynch, to order
certain freight sent _via_ James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad.
Then, with a cigar bought from one of George J. Whelan’s 300 cigar
stores, he will read the New York _Sun_, published by William M. Laffan
and delivered by the American News Company, founded by Patrick
Farrelly—and remark to an English friend:
“Yes, of course, this is an Anglo-Saxon country.”
When J. I. C. Clarke, the genial playwright, wrote his famous poem on
“Kelly and Burke and Shea,” it was generally supposed to be a poetic
fancy. On the contrary, I find it to be a simple matter of American
history that the Kellys, the Burkes and the Sheas have been to the fore
in every generation. They were all three in the battle of Lexington, as
well as in the death-list of the _Maine_. When Hobson sank the
_Merrimac_, a Kelly and a Murphy were his comrades in danger. Our first
noted woman abolitionist was Abbie Kelley. William Darrah Kelley, of
Philadelphia, was a Congressman for nearly thirty years. Hall Jackson
Kelley was the founder of Oregon. The late Eugene Kelly, the New York
banker, won renown as a philanthropist. Among the living members of this
redoubtable family, James E. Kelly is a well-known electrical engineer.
The Kelly Ax Company has a fifty-acre plant in Charleston, W. Va.
Elsewhere * * * you will find the wonderful story of William Kelly,
whose invention has added hundreds of millions to the wealth of the
steel industry.
In the Burke family, three heroic figures appear in the first chapter of
our Revolutionary history—Thomas Burke, the first governor of North
Carolina; Adamus Burke, chancellor of South Carolina; and John Daly
Burk, historian, patriot and duelist. All three were fighters with pen
and sword, who made an indelible mark on the Southern states a century
ago. In 1872, when Froude cast some aspersions upon the Irish, it was
Father Thomas Burke who took up the cudgels against him. And at the
present time we have Burkes enough in the United States to fill a
“Burke’s Peerage” of their own. There are two bishops who bear the
famous name, at Albany and St. Joseph; one brigadier-general, at
Portland, Oregon; one congressman, in South Dakota; a railroad
president, at Cleveland; and a judge at Seattle.
As for the Sheas, at least four of them have buffeted their way to the
front—Gen. John Shea,[8] who won his laurels in the Revolution; Capt.
Daniel Shays, who first fought at Bunker Hill and then stirred up a
little side-show rebellion on his own account; George A. Shea, an
eminent chief justice of New York; and John Gilmary Shea, the historian
of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Footnote 8:
Gen. John Shee.
In the American business world of today, a large proportion of the solid
men—the men who stand like pillars under the heavy burdens—are of Irish
blood. Most conspicuous of all stands the financier upon whom the mantle
of J. Pierpont Morgan seems to have fallen—the man who is not only
combining but coördinating American capital—Thomas Fortune Ryan. He is
one of the greatest masters of financial statesmanship, who cuts the
Gordian knots of finance and ties others of his own.
Equally immovable, in a different field, stands James J. Hill, born in
Canada of Ulster parents. What this one man has done for the United
States has never yet been fully told. He is the creator of the
Northwest—the railway builder who has opened up a territory equal to a
couple of Germanys—the steamship builder who has linked America with the
markets of the East. He has made wide pathways of commerce from Lake
Superior across 1,500 miles of wilderness and 5,000 miles of ocean to
the ports of China, Russia and Japan. Ever since he double-earned his
first dollar as a Mississippi roustabout, fifty years ago, his life has
been a continuous obstacle-race; and there have been few occasions when
James J. Hill missed a hurdle.
Two other railway presidents are Samuel Sloan, of New York, who was born
when Madison was in the White House; and Richard C. Kerens, of St.
Louis. Daniel O’Day[9]—every inch of him Irish—is one of the most
important members of the imperial group of financiers who float the flag
of Standard Oil. Forty years since, he was a laborer in the oil regions,
whose main problem was to find a job; today, as he jokingly says to his
friends, his main problem is to find out how to invest his surplus.
Another New Yorker of Titanic mold is Alexander E. Orr, who was nineteen
years old before he had seen any other country than Ireland. As a
president of large commercial bodies, he has few equals. He is a
director who directs. For nearly fifty years he has stood under the
heaviest responsibilities, and was recently chosen, because of his
ability and uprightness, to preside over the immense interests of the
New York Life Insurance Company.
Footnote 9:
Recently deceased.
If we speak of great Irish bankers, where is there a large American city
without one? In Pittsburg, for instance, where there are a score of
banks bulging with steel millions, the dean of the financial fraternity
is Thomas Mellon, who, like Alexander E. Orr, was born in Tyrone. In New
York there are three, at least, who are too prominent to miss—Thomas M.
Mulry, the new president of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, which
was wholly Irish in its origin, and which holds a hundred millions in
its vaults; Miles M. O’Brien, who was for some time the president of the
board of education; and Samuel G. Bayne, who is notable for having
organized national banks in seven states. Charles J. Bell is a
conspicuous figure in the national capital, as John C. Davis is in
Wyoming. And in Chicago John R. Walsh has been a notable banker and
capitalist for twenty years. The recent collapse of his financial
structure should not obscure the facts of his extraordinary career. To
begin as a barefooted newsboy, and to struggle to a place of power in
the sixth greatest city in the world, always preferring to fight big
enemies rather than little ones—that was Walsh’s record.
Among the cattle kings of the West are Timothy Kinney, of Wyoming, and
George Russell, of Nevada. Also in Chicago, Milwaukee and Omaha are four
brothers who know something about the cattle and beef trade—four
brothers whose parents left Kilkenny in the forties because black famine
threatened them with starvation; who began their business life with no
more chance of fortune than any day laborer in the United States, and
who are today numbered among the few masters of the food supply of the
world—Michael, Edward A., John and Patrick Cudahy.
Other weighty business men, scattered here and there, are John Flannery,
the Savannah cotton king; Thomas F. Walsh, of Washington, who is the
president of the Irrigation Congress; John D. Crimmins, the contractor
who has added 400 buildings to New York; Patrick F. Murphy, president of
the Mark Cross Company and well known in New York as an after-dinner
speaker; Edward Malley, who began with a pack on his back and has now a
department store in New Haven; Ephraim Dempsie, merchant and public man
of Spokane; P. B. Magrane, a well-known merchant in the shoe city of
Lynn; and William P. Rend, the coal magnate of Chicago.
Among the great Irish merchants of former days, the most notable was A.
T. Stewart, whose New York store was the largest of its kind, either in
America or elsewhere. His capital was $3,000 when he began to sell his
Belfast laces, and more than forty millions when he died.
In the United States, as well as in Great Britain, many of the most
distinguished judges have been of Irish blood. Among the nine justices
who sit supreme over all American courts, two are Irish by descent—Judge
Edward D. White and Judge Joseph McKenna. As yet, no one has compiled a
list of the Irish judges in the various state Supreme Courts; but to
take New York as an instance, we find five who are of unusual
prominence—Martin J. Keogh, Morgan J. O’Brien, James Fitzgerald, George
C. Barrett and Victor J. Dowling. It should also be mentioned that the
chief judge in the Philippine Islands—John T. McDonough, formerly of
Albany—is Irish born. William J. Hynes, too, a lawyer of whom Chicago is
justly proud, began life in County Clare.
To answer fully the question “What have the Irish done for American
education?” would need a small book in itself. Was not the late Pres.
William Rainey Harper, the father of Chicago University, of Irish
descent? This extraordinary man crowded the work of several centuries
into less than fifty years, sacrificed his preferences as a student that
he might carry the heaviest financial responsibilities, and died poor
after having gathered a dozen millions for his university.
Of our Irish born educators, no one outranks William H. Maxwell, who has
been for eight years the superintendent of New York’s public schools.
Under him are 16,000 teachers and more than half a million children, the
most lively and cosmopolitan army of youngsters in the world.
Superintendent Maxwell has had to fight for every inch of progress in
his development of the New York school system; but like the dogged
Ulsterman that he is, he has driven ahead with his far-reaching
projects, no matter whether the hue and cry was with him or against him.
“Nothing is too good,” he says, “for the taxpayer’s child.”
Speaking of public schools, it would be a sin of omission at this point
not to mention the thousands of young women of Irish birth or parentage
who are doing faithful work as schoolteachers in all parts of the United
States.
The number of our Irish professors is comparatively small. Some who
deserve special mention are Maurice F. Egan, of the Catholic University
in Washington; James McMahon, of Cornell; Robert Ellis Thompson, of the
Central High School in Philadelphia; and Thomas C. Hall, of the Union
Theological Seminary in New York. A Gaelic chair was established in 1896
at the Catholic University by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and is
filled at the present time by Prof. Joseph P. Dunn, who is of American
birth. To John Tyndall, the notable Irish scientist, the United States
owes a double debt, inasmuch as he not only delivered a course of
lectures here in 1872, but devoted the proceeds to the cause of
scientific research in America.
It is very seldom that an Irishman lacks the gift of speech. Take away
our Irish orators and journalists, and this would be a dumb and
cheerless country indeed. Here, for instance, is an offhand list of
Irish writers of the past and present:
Capt. Mayne Reid, the idol of American boys, and a soldier in our War
with Mexico; John Boyle O’Reilly, the editor and poet; FitzJames
O’Brien, who wrote the famous short story, “The Diamond Lens”; Ignatius
Donnelly, the most versatile and picturesque public man of his
generation in Minnesota; Edwin Lawrence Godkin, of the New York _Evening
Post_, a fighter in the high realm of national morality; Henry W. Grady,
editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_; Patrick Walsh, who was editor of
the Augusta _Chronicle_ and represented Georgia in the United States
Senate; and Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago _Tribune_.
Among those still living are James Jeffrey Roche, now in the consular
service; Joseph Fitzgerald, author and translator; William M. Laffan,
proprietor of the New York _Sun_; George T. Oliver, of the Pittsburg
_Gazette_; Eugene M. O’Neill, of the Pittsburg _Dispatch_; John McLeod
Keating, who won fame by his fight against yellow fever in the South;
and John F. Finerty, the eloquent founder of the Chicago _Citizen_.
Three great publishers of Irish birth have been Mathew Carey, of
Philadelphia, the friend of Lafayette; Robert Bonner, founder of the New
York _Ledger_; and Patrick Donahoe, founder of the Boston _Pilot_ and
_Donahoe’s Magazine_. The name of William Desmond O’Brien, too, deserves
to be included in this paragraph. Mr. O’Brien was a wealthy contractor
of New York who devoted eighteen years of his life to the preparation of
an _Encyclopedia Hibernica_, and who died, broken-hearted, in 1893, with
his great project unfinished. Among Irish-American publishers now
living, the most notable is P. F. Collier, founder of _Collier’s
Weekly_.
This power of expression, which is typical of the Irish race, rises
frequently to the heights of art. The Goddess of Liberty, on the dome of
the Capitol at Washington, was chiseled by the hands of Thomas Crawford,
who was of Irish parentage, and whose son is the well-known novelist, F.
Marion Crawford. Many an American city has been enriched by the genius
of Augustus St. Gaudens, one of the best beloved and most eminent of
American sculptors. The statue upon which St. Gaudens is now working, in
his Vermont studio, is a heroic figure of Parnell for the City of
Dublin, St. Gaudens’ birthplace. Among the landscape painters, Edward
Gay, of New York, has held a place for forty years; and another veteran
artist of Irish birth is William Magrath, who painted “On the Ould
Sod”—a clever study of Irish character that hangs in the Metropolitan
Museum in New York.
It is to Dublin, also, that we are indebted for Victor Herbert, our
popular conductor and composer, and for Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, the
famous band master of Civil War times. There have not been so many Irish
singers of operatic rank, although the Irishman who cannot sing at all
is as rare as a white blackbird. Probably the most notable was Catherine
Hayes, who arrived in this country in 1851, married an American husband
and settled in California. Among the best-known dramatic stars of Irish
birth now upon the stage are Ada Rehan and James O’Neil, and the elder
John Drew was a son of Erin. Andrew Mack and Chauncey Olcott are the
most popular of those who portray Irish life.
That the Irish have been in politics goes without saying. In most states
they have furnished more than their share, both of bosses and of
reformers. Richard Croker, the Tammany Hall leader, and Charles O’Conor,
who overthrew the Tweed Ring, fairly represent the two contending forces
in American political life. So much has been written indiscriminately of
Irish bossism that it is nothing but fair to state that some of the
present leaders of the “anti-graft” movement are Mayor Dunne, of
Chicago; Mayor Fagan, of Jersey City; District Attorney Moran, of
Boston; and Hugh McCaffrey, a member of Mayor Weaver’s cabinet, in
Philadelphia. The late Patrick A. Collins, congressman, consul-general
in London and mayor of Boston, was for years the foremost Irishman in
New England.
In the present Congress there are dozens of members of Irish descent,
but only three of Irish birth—Senator Thomas M. Patterson, of Denver,
who has been for thirty years a national figure; Representative Bourke
Cockran, who is unequaled in the Celtic flow of his eloquence; and
Delegate Bernard S. Rodney, of New Mexico. Senator Thomas Kearns, one of
the solid pillars of the state of Utah, was born in Canada of Irish
parents; and James D. Phelan, the well-known Californian, was the son of
a wealthy Irish merchant of San Francisco. Three other public men of
Irish birth are Thomas Taggart, of Indianapolis; William McAdoo, of New
York; and ex-Governor James E. Boyd, of Nebraska. And no Irishman will
ever allow the fact to be forgotten that James G. Blaine, one of the
greatest figures in all American political history, was of Irish
descent. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, bore an honorable part
in the Revolutionary struggle, and far back in colonial days the Blaines
were among the hardiest pioneers of the Cumberland Valley.
Rising to the religious world, we find many noted Irish names, alike in
the Protestant and Catholic churches. There are no fewer than
twenty-three bishops and five archbishops in this country who learned
their first prayers on Irish soil. This may also be said of Cardinal
Gibbons, who was born in the United States, but taken to Ireland in
infancy. The five archbishops are John M. Farley, John J. Glennon, John
Ireland, John Joseph Keane, and Patrick John Ryan. When was there ever
before such a distinguished quintet of Johns?
Like St. Gaudens and Herbert, Dr. William S. Rainsford hails from
Dublin. Thirty years ago he entered New York an unknown young curate,
and proceeded to establish the foremost institutional church in America,
having at the present time more than 5,000 members. Unfortunately,
overwork has recently compelled him to resign.
Historically, there have been four Irish churchmen who have wielded a
great influence in American affairs—Father Mathew, the apostle of
temperance, who persuaded 600,000 Americans to sign the pledge;
Archbishop Hughes, of New York, who was sent to England by President
Lincoln during the Civil War; Father Ryan, the poet of the South; and
the Rev. John Hall, the pulpit orator of New York.
Nothing can be more absurd than to speak of the Irish as newcomers in
America. No one but a resurrected mound-builder would be entitled to do
that. For the last thousand years or more, wherever there has been any
great enterprise on foot, in the thick of things there have always been
men with the shamrock in their hearts. The ship that carried Columbus
from the known continent to the unknown had a Galway man aboard—so we
are told on good authority. And one of the maps which cheered Columbus
forward showed a country across the ocean which was called “Great
Ireland.” This far western land had been discovered, it was reported, by
St. Brendan, an Irish monk, eight or nine centuries before.
There were a few Irish on the _Mayflower_, but the first large body
arrived about twenty years later. There were five or six hundred of
them—a forlorn and pitiful mob, forcibly transported from their native
land. Those were the black days of Cromwell, when $25 was paid for the
head of a wolf and $50 for the head of a patriot Irishman. In ten years
probably 100,000 were driven out, and many of them came to the American
colonies.
The first big Irishman in our colonial history was Gov. Thomas Dongan,
who gave New York its earliest charter, and who deserves to be called
one of the pioneer champions of popular rights in America. The second
was the distinguished philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who came from Derry
to Rhode Island in 1728, lured by a missionary enterprise that failed.
All through the eighteenth century came a steady stream of the exiled
Irish—men and women who had been toughened in a terrible school, and who
were fit and ready for the perils of the American wilderness. Most of
them were from the north of Ireland—from little Ulster, that
giant-breeding province whose sons have made history in almost every
country of the earth. They were the first across the Alleghanies. They
settled Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and the coal and iron regions
of Pennsylvania. Such men as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Matthew
Lyon were their leaders. It was they who colonized Ulster County in New
York and Londonderry in New Hampshire. The colonial hero of the
Catskills was Timothy Murphy—so wrote Jay Gould in his famous _History
of Delaware County_, published fifty years ago.
When the War of Independence began there were Irish on the firing-line
everywhere. They had a personal as well as a colonial grievance against
Great Britain; and here was a chance, at last, to even up old scores. A
writer of those times describes them as “a hardy, brave, hot-headed
race; excitable in temper; unrestrainable in passion; invincible in
prejudice. They are impatient of restraint, and rebellious against
anything that in their eyes bears the resemblance of injustice. They
were the readiest of the ready on the battlefields of the Revolution.”
These were not parlor virtues, but they were the kind that founded the
American republic. “You lost America by the Irish,” declared Lord
Mountjoy in the British Parliament.
In those critical days, while thousands were dilly-dallying, the Irish
were hot for action. It was John Sullivan who struck the first blow,
four months before the historic skirmish at Lexington, by capturing
military stores at Portsmouth. The Sullivan family, of which he was a
member, furnished three governors for the young republic. Their mother,
in her old age, used to say that she had often worked in the fields
carrying the governor of Massachusetts, while the governors of New
Hampshire and Vermont tagged at her skirts. The first British warship
was captured by an O’Brien; and John Barry became the official father of
the American navy by receiving the earliest commission as captain. The
first American general to fall was the brilliant Richard Montgomery,
whose virtues compelled even Lord North to lament his death. It is an
interesting fact, and one of which few are aware, that the three
monuments in front of New York’s oldest church—St. Paul’s, on lower
Broadway, are in memory of three famous Irishmen—General Montgomery,
Thomas Addis Emmet and Dr. William MacNevin, the first scientific
chemist of New York.
In 1776 three of the signers were of Irish birth—Matthew Thornton, James
Smith and George Taylor. Five others, at least, were of Irish
blood—Edward Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Thomas McKean, George Reed and
Charles Carroll of Carrollton. The secretary of the assemblage, who read
aloud the Declaration on the birth-morning of our republic, was Charles
Thompson, Irish born and the son of an evicted farmer. And one of the
first societies to back George Washington with men and money was the
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Philadelphia, who raised half a million
dollars and swung into line with a cheer. Only one of their members
objected, and his name was struck from the society’s rolls. Washington
was a frequent guest at their banquets and an honorary member, as
President Roosevelt is of the same society in New York.
No history of the Revolution is complete without its Irish chapter. What
with the dashing work of the Irish Brigade under Count Dillon; with the
exploits of Mad Anthony Wayne and General Moylan, the Murat of the
Revolutionary cavalry; and with the powerful aid of Burke and Sheridan
in England, King George the Third found himself beset by Irishmen from
all quarters. There were whole companies of Irishmen who fought for
American independence under their own green flag, as loyal to their
adopted country as to the land of their birth.
The most typical Irishman of pioneer times was Andrew Jackson, our
seventh president. One secret of his greatness lay in the fact that
there were many men of his mold and nationality in every American
community. It is a fact that should cause every Irish heart to beat with
pride that the first American president who rose from the rank and file,
without the prestige of aristocratic birth or the polish of education,
was the son of a rack-rented exile from Ulster. It may even be true that
he was the first in the world’s history to climb so high, not by force
of arms, but by the free choice of a free people.
“Old Hickory,” as his soldiers called him, has had no superiors as a
popular leader. None of his enemies, and he made many of them, could
question his honesty, his sincerity, his courage. He believed that the
duty of a government was to protect the weak, curb the strong, and obey
public opinion. During his presidency the United States bounded into
industrial greatness and international prestige.
Overlapping Jackson came another typical Irishman, equally great in
peace and war—Gen. James Shields. This remarkable man climbed to fame by
half a dozen various paths. He was the hero of two wars, a judge of the
Illinois Supreme Court, a governor of Oregon, and the only American who
has had the honor of representing three states in the United States
Senate. Like Jackson, he was gentle and chivalrous in private life, and
an incarnate fury on the field of battle. His whole career was one of
romantic knight errantry and adventure. He was a wit and a maker of
epigrams. One of his happiest replies was on one occasion when he was
asked to name his greatest victory.
“My greatest victory,” he answered quickly, “was won on the day when my
sweetheart, Mary Carr, said ‘Yes.’”
After the terrible famine caused by the failure of the potato crop in
1845 and the following years, the Irish poured into America in mighty
hosts. Since that time more than four millions have arrived here, ready
with Celtic buoyancy for the battle of life in a new land, and yet
almost heart-broken to leave the green fields of their fathers.
“Is it hard to die, Barney?” asked a friend of a dying Irishman.
“It is,” replied Barney; “but not so hard as it was to leave Ireland.”
But they went to work with a laugh and an “Irish hurrah.” Whether they
knew it or not, they had arrived when they were most needed. The era of
railroads and steamships had begun. Great cities were being built and
being rebuilt. The factory system was being established in New England.
The iron and steel trade had secured a solid foothold. And so, while the
Irish had nothing to offer at first but labor, labor was what the United
States was most urgently in need of at that stage of its development.
When the Civil War put American manhood to the test the Irish were
everywhere—in the thickets of the Wilderness, at the Bloody Angle of
Gettysburg, on the crimson field of Chancellorsville. Standing for state
rights—the rights of which John C. Calhoun had been the great
exponent—were Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, Senator Regan, the Texan, and
others. Standing for the Union were Sheridan, Meade and Meagher, whose
dashing valor is one of our national boasts. Unquestionably “Little
Phil” Sheridan deserves a high place, not only among American generals,
but among the foremost military commanders of the world. Today, among
the retired veterans of the United States Army there are three
brigadier-generals of Irish birth—Richard Comba, John J. Coppinger and
William Quinton.[10] There is also one rear-admiral—Joseph Trilley.
Footnote 10:
To these three should be added: Brig. Gen. Bernard J. D. Irwin, Brig.
Gen. Michael Cooney, Brig. Gen. James W. Scully, Brig. Gen. Charles P.
Eagan, Brig. Gen. William E. Dougherty, Brig. Gen. John R. McGinness
and Brig. Gen. John J. O’Connell, all natives of Ireland.
For more than two hundred years the sons of Ireland have been among the
pathfinders who prepared the way for the American nation in its mighty
sweep from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No region has ever been too
remote or perilous to daunt the Irish pioneer. Whoever discovers the
North Pole will no doubt find a Kelly or an O’Brien already on the spot.
It was Capt. John J. Healy, for instance, who was the commercial
discoverer of Alaska; and when the United States first took possession
of that frozen country, four of the sixteen white men in its largest
settlement were found to be subscribers to the _Irish World_. Gen.
Patrick E. Connor was a trail-maker in Utah, as Philip Nolan and Sam
Houston were in Texas. Henry W. Oliver, the late steel king of
Pittsburg, who had the most dramatic career of ups and downs that
western Pennsylvania has ever known, was the first Pittsburgher to
realize fully the value of the Lake Superior iron ore. In consequence,
he piled up a forty-million fortune. Missouri had Brian Mullanphy, who
left a fortune for the assistance of poor immigrants. In fact, when the
history of any western state is written, it will be found that among the
army that cleared the way there was always an Irish brigade.
The plain, straight truth about the Western Irish is more wonderful than
any fanciful tale woven in the loom of Arabian imagination. Talk about
_Monte Cristo_ or _Sinbad the Sailor_! They are paltry adventurers
compared with men like John W. Mackay or Marcus Daly. With his three
partners, also Irish—James C. Flood, James G. Fair and William S.
O’Brien—John W. Mackay changed the silver markets of the world. Within a
comparatively few years these four men took a treasure of $150,000,000
from one hole in the side of a Nevada mountain—the famous Comstock lode.
Always ready for big enterprises, Mackay put his millions behind James
Gordon Bennett’s dream to link America and Europe together by an
Atlantic cable, and drove the scheme ahead to complete success. What
Marcus Daly did in Montana was different only in detail. He, too,
“grasped the skirts of happy chance” with a grip that landed him and his
friends among the most powerful money kings of his generation.
All five of these Irishmen began at the lowest rung of the ladder. They
made themselves the leaders in a country of strong and daring men, by
being the strongest and most daring of all. And today their children
have linked their fathers’ names by marriage with some of the proudest
families in the older states—the Oelrichses, Vanderbilts, Duers and
Girards, as well as to the princely Colonnas of Italy.
Whether it is the versatile genius of the Emmets of New York; or the
fighting pluck of “Bucky” O’Neil, who was killed with the Rough Riders
at Santiago; or the sagacity of John Mitchell, who is the leader of
150,000 miners—whether it is the sheer brain force and inventiveness of
a Fulton, a Morse or a McCormick, or the quaint and witty wisdom of “Mr.
Dooley,” there have always been qualities of the Irish head and the
Irish heart that brought honor to the little home-land of the Celt.
“There is nothing negative about the Irish,” said Patrick Ford—which is
exactly what anyone who knows the rugged old journalist would have
expected him to say. They may be on the wrong side of the quarrel, but
one thing is always certain—they are never on the fence. They care
little or nothing for obstacles and adverse circumstances. They are the
best of friends and the best of enemies—the quickest with either the
open hand or the fist—the most loyal to a cause and the most rebellious
against a tyranny. They live closest to hope and farthest from despair.
“Why,” said Maurice Healy, an Alaskan fur trader, “I’m only 700 miles
from a bank!”
You can bend and twist an Irishman, but you can seldom break him—the
records of insanity and suicide prove this. He “works hard in time of
peace and fights hard in time of war,” as President Roosevelt has said.
Impulsive, daring, constructive, indomitable, the Irishman has done
indispensable work in this land of his choice.
“May his shadow never grow less!”—so say we all.