The reservation consists of about 700 acres of grass and woodland, nearly level and but very little cut up ravines. Not being handicapped by the presence of old structures, the barracks, quarters and other buildings built when the post was started present a handsome appearance. They represent the most approved methods of construction of their time and through their simplicity of design and large details they permit of ready and economical maintenance and bid fair to endure for years. During the summer months, from April to November, and in the winter when weather conditions are favorable the garrison, a regiment of Infantry, a squadron of cavalry, a battalion of Field Artillery, and such details of the special arms, the Signal Corps, Hospital Corps, etc., is busy carrying on its training for active service or in providing for its own immediate necessities. For it must be understood the government’s immense plant,—two hundred and odd buildings, five hundred horses and mules, the grounds and the valuable machinery of war must be cared for by the ones who use them. Thus it is that the soldier not only does his own cooking and general housekeeping but works for the general good of the little city in which he lives; grooming horses, driving teams, hauling supplies, or if his capabilities lie in that direction working as carpenter or mason on the buildings of the post. His housekeeping and other work, that in civil life is usually looked out for by his mother or wife, he must, in the army, do to live, after that comes the training in the fighting arts which finally decide wars. The military year is divided into two seasons, the season of practical work, carried out in the open, and the season of theoretical work, carried on indoors and outside as circumstances permit. The theoretical training is carried on usually in the winter but as a matter of fact there is some overlapping.
The pleasant summer weather brings thousands of the residents of Chicago to the post. Lunch basket in hand, they make a peaceful invasion and forget the heat, smoke and soot of their city surroundings as they wander through the clean grass and shady groves. Then, too, the training of the soldier, be he of the cavalry, the “eyes of the service”; the artillery with its scientific leanings; or of the “walk-a-heaps,” as the Indians call the infantry—the backbone of all armies; all present much of interest to the civilian, who, unless he visits their stations rarely sees the regular soldier, save, perhaps as he marches by in some celebration of national importance, or toils, in heavy marching order through the country districts carrying out some manœuvre problem.
Thus it may be seen that the American people, through their representatives, have, in Fort Sheridan, erected and maintained, to the memory of their gallant general, not a cold, dead memorial of stone, but a living, vital monument, a link in the defenses of the nation, and have placed it where his deeds and the work going on under the shadow of his name, serve as an inspiration to the patriotism of the youth of our second city.
THE IRISH ELEMENT IN AMERICA.
BY MR. R. C. O’CONNOR OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
The Irish people have been coming to this country from the time of its earliest settlement. Many came involuntarily, having been deported hither by order of the Cromwell Government, and some historians assert that during the ten years succeeding the close of the Cromwellian war, in 1652, a hundred thousand young men and young women were shipped to the West Indies and to the colonies. Voluntary emigration, however, had not begun to any great extent before the opening of the 18th century. We have historical evidence, however, in support of the statement that the Irish came with the earliest settlers of the colonies.
Reverend William Elliott Griffis in his work, “Brave Little Holland and What She Taught Us,” says on page 208: “In the ‘Mayflower’ ... were one hundred and one men, women, boys and girls, as passengers, besides captain and crew. These were of English, Dutch, French and Irish ancestry and thus typical of our national stock.” We know from Hatten’s “Original Lists,” and other authorities, that Irish immigration to Virginia was in progress as far back as 1634–35. And Felt’s “Ecclesiastical History of New England” says that William Collins led a number of Irish refugees to Connecticut from the West Indies about the year 1640. Previous to the beginning of the 18th century Irish emigrants turned their faces towards Europe, where the young men entered the armies with the hope of some day returning to achieve the independence of their country. An idea can be formed of the extent of this emigration from a statement made by the Abbe Macgeoghan, who was chaplain to the Irish Brigade in France, who says that “the records of the War Office of France show that during the fifty years preceding the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, over 450,000 Irishmen entered the service of that country alone.” When peace with England was declared in 1748 the Irish found, much to their disgust and contrary to their hopes and to the promises held out to them, that France had left them out of her reckoning and that their blood so lavishly shed for that country had been shed in vain, as far as any advantage to their native land was concerned. After that time the Irish ceased to emigrate to Europe to any great extent, and turned their faces to the great West, then opening up before the world, and since that time, now two hundred years ago, they have been coming in a steady stream to this country.
No statistics of the nationality of immigrants were kept by this Government until 1820, and we are kept in more or less doubt as to the exact number of our people who came here previous to that time. We have, however, historical evidence that this number was very large. Wilson in his “History of the American People,” speaking of the early years of the 18th century, says: “For several years after the first quarter of the new century had run out (that is, after 1725) immigration from the North of Ireland came crowding in twelve thousand strong to the year. In 1729 quite 5,000 of them entered Pennsylvania alone. From Pennsylvania they passed along the broad, inviting valley, southward, into the western part of Virginia.” Thomas Bond, British Consul at Philadelphia from 1787 to 1812, who is described as the most efficient of the British officials of the United States, writing to the Duke of Leeds, head of the English Foreign Office, in 1789, says: “The immigrants hither since the peace, my lord, that is since the conclusion of the war in 1783, have been much greater from Ireland than from all other parts of Europe. Of 25,716 passengers, redemptioners and servants imported since the peace into Pennsylvania, 1,893 only were Germans; the rest consisted of Irish and a very few Scotch. Of 2,167 already imported in the present year, 114 only were Germans; the rest were Irish.... I have not yet been able to obtain any account of the number of Irish passengers brought hither for any given series of years before the war, but from my own recollection I know the number was very great, and I have been told that in one year 6,000 landed at Philadelphia, Wilmington and Newcastle upon Delaware.”
Ramsay, the historian, writing in this same year (1789) says: “The colonies, which now form the United States, may be considered as Europe transplanted. Ireland, England, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland and Italy furnished the original stock of the population, and have been supposed to contribute to it in the order named. For the last seventy or eighty years no nation has contributed so much to the population of America as Ireland.” [The emphasis is mine.]
This is significant and valuable testimony to our numbers in the years preceding the Revolution, and justifies the statements that have been made that the Irish element formed one-third of the population at the close of the colonial period. Doctor Lynch, Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, says: “The Irish immigration almost took possession of the State. Irish family names abound in every rank and condition of life, and there are few natives of the State in whose veins there does not run more or less Irish blood.”