If Emerson had dedicated this sentiment to Ireland and her patriotic sons, he could not more fittingly have described her relations to the implacable foe whose mood, after centuries of oppression and warfare, has not been able to dim the lustre of that patient Star of Hope which will shine on continuously to illumine space, without shading, but with the scars of memory to make more radiant the valor and virtue of her people who carry on their brow no trace of age, and in their hearts no fear to die in the cause of human freedom.
I thank you.
President-General Quinlan: This concludes the Twelfth Annual Banquet of the American-Irish Historical Society. I thank you all in the name of the administration for your presence and your hearty coöperation in this feast of reason and flow of soul.
Historical Papers.
THE IRISH SHARE IN THE HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION.
BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE, ESQ., VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY FOR NEW YORK.
INTRODUCTION.
New York, greatest of American cities and second of all cities of the world in point of population and perhaps of wealth, paused for a week in September, 1909, nominally to honor two great memories, really to celebrate itself.
It may be that Henry Hudson, when he sailed the Half-Moon up the great North River to the head of navigation and then returned to the ocean in 1609, never set foot on the Island of Manhattan; but the settlement by the Dutch that followed was certainly the result of his voyage of discovery. His was, therefore, a good epoch-making name to honor. More directly was it meet to honor the name of Robert Fulton, whose conquest of the waters with the power of steam in 1807 was made from New York shipyards, and upon the mighty stream that Hudson was the first white man to navigate. That in the person of Fulton, Ireland had a share in the memories of these celebrated men—for he was the son of Irish immigrants—appealed powerfully, as it should, to the race pride of the Irish-born and Irish-descended of the City of New York. It insured their hearty coöperation in the plans for the Hudson-Fulton celebration. But to many the event suggested the question, what share the Irish race has had in the upbuilding of New York, and what stake it holds in its life and its prosperity today. Others better fitted must work out the details of the answer, of which here is presented something of a summary. At any rate, it covers matters well worthy of the research which naturally drifts to a society like ours. Before attempting to record the Irish share in New York’s Hudson-Fulton celebration, let us examine briefly Ireland’s share in New York itself.
Here came the bulk of the great successive waves of emigration from Ireland. How large the total of the children of Ireland, who cast their lot with this Republic, history does not tell us with any accuracy. They were here from the very beginning of the white man’s settlement on Manhattan Island. Before 1820, no governmental roster of immigrants was kept, but in the eighty years from 1821 to 1900, the United States census bureau counts up a total of 3,871,253 Irish immigrants, nearly 3,000,000 coming hither between 1851 and 1900. That this enormous inflow came from a country that at its highest tide-mark of population never numbered more than 8,000,000 souls is a fact at once astounding and appalling. Ireland literally cuts itself in two to supply the emigration to America. Besides this outflow to America, another stream ran to England, Australia and New Zealand, but to each in much smaller volume than crossed the Atlantic. At its highest flow it brought over nearly a million Irish souls in ten years, namely, between 1851 and 1860. Since then it has fallen away, but what this immigration has meant in the upbuilding of the country at large may be imagined from the deduction made by the United State census of 1900. It is therein stated that “Ireland contributed more than two-fifths of the immigration between 1821 and 1850; more than one-third from 1851 to 1860; nearly one-fifth from 1861 to 1870.” In the following decade the stream held about the same level. Between 1881 and 1890 it rose again by nearly fifty per cent. Thenceforward the drain upon Ireland was to lessen, and with a total of 390,179 between 1891 and 1900 it represented barely more than one-tenth of the total immigration for the ten years. Since 1900 it has steadily declined, mainly for the reason that Ireland is nearly drained of its emigration material, but also in some degree that better conditions are obtaining there. A backward glance shows that of the nearly twenty millions of immigrants from all lands up to 1900 one in every five came from Ireland.