4.5+Irish+Immigration

In the 1840s, a disease killed most of the potato plants in Ireland, leaving the Irish without enough food to eat. To escape the so-called Irish Potato Famine, many Irish immigrated to the United States. Once there, however, they faced strong anti-Irish discrimination. The Irish had long been oppressed and looked down on by neighboring Britain, and many Americans were of British ancestry. Most Irish were Catholic, and most Americans were Protestants with a strong anti-Catholic prejudice. Most Irish were poor and entered American life at the bottom of the social ladder. Today, it seems obvious that people of Irish descent are racially ‘white,’ but this was not so clear to the people of the 1840s. Examine the following documents and try to determine whether the Irish were considered ‘white’ in the century.

Black vs. Irish - Thomas Nast
//Source: A cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast for the cover of Harper’s Weekly, December 7, 1876.//(Figure below).

Questions:

 * 1) The man in the “white” scale is supposed to be Irish. What is the message of this cartoon?
 * 2) Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, drew for //Harper’s Weekly//. Based on this cartoon, what sort of people do you think read //Harper’s Weekly//?

Cartoon in a Newspaper, 1883
//Source: Political cartoon published in Puck humor magazine on May 9, 1883.//(Figure below). THE IRISH DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE THAT WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH.

Questions:

 * 1) The angry woman in the cartoon is supposed to be Irish. Describe what she looks like and how she’s acting.
 * 2) Based on this cartoon, what job do you think many Irish women had in the 1880s? What were some stereotypes about Irish women?

Excerpt from The Know-Nothing and American Crusader – July 29, 1854
//Source: An item that ran in The Know-Nothing and American Crusader, a nativist, anti-Catholic newspaper published in Boston.// > **THINGS WHICH ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND ALL TRUE ROMAN CATHOLICS HATE** > Providence, July 22, 1854 > —UNCLE SAM
 * 1) They HATE our Republic, and are trying to overthrow it.
 * 2) They HATE the American //Eagle//, and it offends them beyond endurance to see it worn as an ornament by Americans.
 * 3) They HATE our //Flag//, as it manifest by their grossly insulting it.
 * 4) They HATE the liberty of conscience.
 * 5) They HATE the liberty of the Press.
 * 6) They HATE the liberty of speech.
 * 7) They HATE our Common School system.
 * 8) They HATE the Bible, and would blot it out of existence //if// they could!
 * 9) The //Priests// HATE married life, and yet by //them is fulfilled// the Scripture, to wit: ‘more are the children of the desolate, than the children of the married wife.’
 * 10) They HATE Protestants, and are sworn to //exterminate// them from our country and the earth.
 * 11) They HATE the name of WASHINGTON, because he was a //Republican// and Protestant.
 * 12) They HATE all rulers that do not swear allegiance to the Pope of Rome.
 * 13) They HATE to be //ruled// by //Americans//, and say ‘WE WILL NOT BE RULED BY THEM!’
 * 14) They HATE to support their own paupers and they are left to be supported by the tax paying Americans.
 * 15) They HATE, above all, the //‘Know-Nothings,’// who are determined to rid this country from their accursed power.

Questions:

 * 1) Why did the ‘Know-Nothings’ hate the Catholics so much?
 * 2) According to the ‘Know-Nothings’ could the Irish ever be true Americans? Why or why not?

New York Times Advertisement, 1854
//Source: An advertisement that ran in the New York Times on March 25, 1854.//(Figure below). Jensen, Richard. “No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization.” Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429 > **Original Transcript:** > GROCERY CART AND HARNESS FOR SA > --In good order, and one chestnut horse, old > excellent saddle horse ; can be ridden by a lady. Also, > young man wanted, from to  of age, able to w > No Irish need apply. CLUFF & TUNIS, No. 270 W > ington-st., corner of Myrtle-av., Brooklyn.

Questions:

 * 1) What does the advertisement mean when it says: “No Irish need apply?”
 * 2) Based on this advertisement, how do you think the Irish were treated when they looked for jobs? Why might this be the case?

Wages of Whiteness – David Roediger
//Source: Excerpt from the book Wages of Whiteness, written by historian David R. Roediger and published in 1991.// > Irish-American workers also suffered an association with servile labor by virtue of their heralded, and at least sometimes practiced, use as substitutes for slaves within the South. Gangs of Irish immigrants worked ditching and draining plantations, building levees and sometimes clearing land because of the danger of death to valuable slave property (and, as one account put it, to mules) in such pursuits. Frederick Law Olmsted's widely circulated accounts of the South quoted more than one Southerner who explained the use of Irish labor on the ground that ‘niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard... nobody loses anything.’ > Irish youths were also likely to be found in the depleted ranks of indentured servants from the early national period through the Civil War. In that position they were sometimes called ‘Irish slaves’ and more frequently ‘bound boys’. The degraded status of apprentices was sometimes little distinguishable from indenture by the 1840s and was likewise increasingly an Irish preserve. In New York City, Irish women comprised the largest group of prostitutes, or, as they were sometimes called in the 1850s, ‘white slaves’.

Questions:
Source: []
 * 1) Why were Irish used to do difficult labor in the South?
 * 2) Based on this document, do you think the Irish were treated like slaves?