Dr. Quinlan: The next order of proceedings will be the presentation of scientific papers. The first to have been read was by Hon. Joseph F. O’Connell, member of Congress from Massachusetts. Unfortunately, Mr. O’Connell is detained unavoidably at Boston on account of a hotly contested municipal election, and has notified us of his inability to be present. He will, however, submit his paper to the Secretary-General later, which, after approval by the Executive Council, will be ordered printed.
The next is an article on Stonewall Jackson by John Louis Sheehan, LL. D., Professor at Boston University School of Law.
Dr. Sheehan: Mr. President-General, Officers and Members of the American Irish Historical Society, it gives me great pleasure today to pay tribute to the memory of that hero of the South, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Doctor Sheehan then read his paper, which is printed in full elsewhere in this volume.
Dr. Quinlan: As these papers are published in full in the Journal of the Society, and as our time is getting so short, I will ask, if it be consistent, that the readers give them in abstract.
The next article is by Mr. Joseph I. C. Clarke, Vice-President of the Society for New York, on the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. This paper is of great length and has been prepared with the utmost care and painstaking effort by Vice-President Clarke, complying with a vote of the Society requesting the same, passed October 1, 1909, at an informal meeting of the Society on board the “Asbury Park.” The introduction to this article not being complete at this time, the reading will be omitted, but the paper ordered printed in its entirety in Volume IX.
The next is by Hon. James Fitzgerald, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, on the Sixty-Ninth Regiment.
Judge Fitzgerald: Mr. President and Gentlemen: I felt honored by the request to prepare a paper for this interesting meeting and was particularly pleased that the subject suggested was one very near to my heart as it is to the hearts of all men of Irish blood in America. We have just listened to the splendid eulogy by the gentleman from Boston of a great soldier who fell in the Civil War battling for the lost cause. My paper deals with the record of the gallant 69th Regiment, which fought so valiantly for the Union, and it is a high tribute to the nature of our institutions and the character of our people to be able to say that an eulogy of this regiment delivered in Charleston, Savannah or Richmond would be as enthusiastically received as the address on Stonewall Jackson has been received in New York.
I have prepared a paper and hold it in my hand as we say in the courts as “the best evidence” that I have performed the work. The story of the Sixty-ninth is, however, necessarily a long one; it involves a recital of many glorious events, and its reading, even in the condensed form of my paper, would, in view of the many matters to be disposed of at this gathering, occupy too much of your time. I will, therefore, only tell you about it in the abstract, requesting, as is frequently done in Congress, “leave to print.”
The Sixty-ninth has existed as a regiment for nearly sixty years, and throughout all that period, in peace and in war, its ranks have practically been made up of men of Irish blood; it is the typical Irish-American regiment, and its record is a source of pride and pleasure, not only to Irishmen and their descendants, but to all Americans. You may call us Irish-Americans or American-Irish, but we are, nevertheless, Americans of the American. We were among the earliest settlers upon the Continent; we kept on coming steadily from those early times in large numbers, and under existing conditions upon the other side of the Atlantic, it is fair to predict that the flow of Irish emigration to the United States is liable to continue in the future. The expressions, “Irish-American” or “American-Irish,” in their real significance, mean intense, true Americans. We love the Union, we are devoted to the principles of the Constitution; we are obedient to the law; we are peaceable, industrious and loyal. For all our fellow Americans, no matter what their national origin, we entertain a spirit of fraternity and are bound to them by the ties of common brotherhood; the flag of the Republic is for us the symbol of a sovereignty under which we are proud and happy to live, and in defense of which we are at all times ready to take up arms.