A considerable number of Irish immigrants arrived here between 1800 and 1815 from the remnant of North American territory still subject to England, and especially from Newfoundland. From a very early period, Irish fishermen had been accustomed to visit the shores of that island, and not seldom did they bring with them proscribed and persecuted priests, who sought shelter there from the fanatical “priest hunters” employed in enforcing the English penal laws in Ireland. But even there were they harassed and hounded and the exercise of their faith prohibited, and it was not until after the achievement of American Independence that Catholics were permitted to openly profess the principles and practice the duties of their religion. In 1784, the then governor, Vice-Admiral Campbell, issued an order allowing “All persons inhabiting the island to have full liberty of conscience and free exercise of all such modes of religious worship as are not prohibited by law.”
It seems probable that this official acknowledgment of the right of liberty of conscience was hastened, not only by the triumph of the American “rebels,” but also by the fact that in 1776 an attempt was made by the Irish in Newfoundland to aid the Americans by sympathetic movements, which clearly indicated their disposition to make common cause with Washington and his compatriots.
The large numbers of Wexford and other insurgents, who had escaped to Newfoundland after the failure of the insurrection of ’98, and who, though defeated, had not lost heart or hatred of their oppressors, became so numerous in 1799 that they formed a plan to expel the English from the island, resolving in case of failure to “set off for the United States.” They succeeded in extending the United Irish organization, not only among a very considerable number of the people, but also among a large proportion of the soldiers composing the Royal Newfoundland regiment, then stationed in St. John’s, the capital.
The movement was unsuccessful, owing to the timidity or treachery of some among the military. Five soldiers were hanged, seven sent to Halifax to be shot, many others carried to the same place “to be there dealt with,” and the regiment was removed from St. John’s and replaced by another. Ogden, the governor, in a letter written in July, 1800, says, “We do not know, nor was it possible to ascertain how far this defection and the United (Irish) Oath extended through the regiment.” He admits that “the defection was very extensive, not only through the regiment, but through the inhabitants of this and all the out-harbors, particularly to the southward, where the people almost to a man had taken the United (Irish) Oath, which is ‘to be true to the old cause, and to follow their heads of whatsoever denomination.’” He supposes that the plans “are not given up, but only waiting a proper opportunity to break through,” and adds that, according to statements made by a United Irishman, who was only a “novice,” the movement had been undertaken “in consequence of letters received from Ireland.” He further demands a reinforcement of troops—1,500 men—which will be needed “while Ireland is in such a state of ferment as it has been, and is likely to continue, until the business of the Union is settled, for the events of Ireland have heretofore, and will henceforth, in a great measure, govern the sentiments and actions of the far greater majority of the people in this country.”
The unsatisfactory outcome of this movement caused numbers of the United Irishmen of Newfoundland to seek shelter in the United States. “American traders came disguised, sold and bartered their goods in the outports and stole away the men as usual,” about this time, just as during the closing years of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th, the French smugglers carried over to France the “Wild Geese.” It is, of course, impossible to ascertain the number of those who came here at the period and under the conditions above referred to, but it is evident that there were many thousands of them.
In 1804, Irish immigrants to the number of 670 are reported as arriving at St. John’s on their way to the United States, and for several years after thousands of their countrymen chose the same route to our shores. During the war of 1812 many of the Irish who had remained on the island went to serve on American privateers against the English, and many of these ships were commanded by Irishmen.
The large number of Irish who entered the United States from British North America within the period considered is not taken into account by our authorities on immigration, and their estimates of the direct immigration from Ireland and Britain are also very evidently far too low. They do not seem to remember that, there being no supervision of vessels carrying passengers until a much later period, the ships for America were crowded to a degree which in our day would hardly be thought possible.
Wolfe Tone, in his “Memoirs,” gives us an idea of the manner in which passengers were packed in vessels bound for the United States. Speaking of his voyage from Belfast to Wilmington, Delaware, in 1795—which occupied upwards of eight weeks—he says: “The slaves who are carried from the coast of Africa have much more room allowed them than the immigrants who pass from Ireland to America, for the avarice of the captains in that trade is such that they think they never can load their vessels sufficiently, and they trouble their heads in general no more about the accommodation and storage of their passengers than of any other lumber aboard.” There were over 300 immigrants on board the ship on which he sailed, but when off the banks of Newfoundland, she was stopped by three English frigates, and fifty of her passengers carried off by the “press-gangs” to serve in the navy of their persecutors. Tone narrowly escaped being among the number of those taken.
Many of the captains of emigrant ships at that time were thoroughly unscrupulous. A few years before the incidents just referred to occurred, the captain of a vessel, who had undertaken to carry a body of emigrants from Dunleary (now Kingstown), Ireland, to Charleston, S. C., landed eighty of them on the island of Inagua, near Dominica, in the West Indies, telling them it was well inhabited, and that provisions were plentiful. When, after having landed, they found that they had been deceived by the captain, and attempted to get on board the vessel again, they were fired on and one of them killed. They were, however, rescued a short time after by a passing American vessel, being, as might be supposed, “all in a most distressed condition.” It was not only the poorer people of Ireland who even then sought a free home in this land. Many persons of means were always to be found among those who came direct from thence. In 1798, a ship arrived at Norfolk, Va., from that country “with 426 passengers, chiefly tradesmen and persons of property.”
In the absence of any authentic records of immigration during the thirty years preceding 1820, we are justified, when endeavoring to form anything like an approximately correct estimate of the arrivals from Ireland during that period, in taking into consideration the strength of the Irish element here at that time, and the importance attached to the movements of Irish Americans in aid of their struggling kindred in the Old Land. Branches of the United Irish Society were established here soon after the organization of that body in Ireland. “Its headquarters were in Philadelphia, where Mathew Carey and other good men gave it aid and impulse. The publications of the Irish society were reprinted in the city just named as early as 1794, and funds were collected and arms promised.”