Now, my friends, I am really trespassing on your good nature because I am keeping you from a great treat. I came here tonight and found my countryman, McManus of Donegal, and then I found I had the honor of sitting next to a good man from County Tyrone (and next to Donegal Tyrone is a good substitute), the Rev. Dr. Sheppard.
All I have to say in conclusion is this: I say to my American friends, we are not seeking to inject a foreign story with foreign prejudices and old world bitterness into your history; we are not asking for any place in that history which we do not deserve; we are not asking you to subvert the facts of American history; we are making no special plea for our nationality or our race; but we are demanding justice and we are going to get it.
You younger members will live to see the time when, a convention of historians being called in the city of New York, as was the other day, your honored President will be invited to fill an enviable place in that convocation; and when the heads of our great universities, when the men who stand for the most learned in America, undertake to pass upon the historical phases of that period of our history from the beginning up to 1860, Ireland and Irish men and women will be given their proper place. (Applause.)
We need no vindication after 1860. We vindicated our place in American history on every battlefield of the Civil War. We were at Bull Run, at Fredericksburg, at Gettysburg and Appomattox. They cannot rub the Irish names off the records of the Civil War because they are too numerous. There was scarcely a home in Ireland in any county or parish which had not its representative under that flag when it was embattled and endangered on the fields of the South. (Applause.)
And I repeat it now; I have said it before and I repeat it now, that that horrible, fratricidal, prolonged and bloody conflict did as much for the Irish in America as it did for the negro whom it freed. It vindicated the patriotism and gratitude and loyalty of the Irishman, and the valor and chivalry of his race displayed by him under that flag, from the beginning to the close of the war, was second to none. And in every sacrifice that has been made to found or perpetuate this nation, Irish men and Irish women, Irish courage and Irish conscience, a never changing faith in God, a high Celtic idealism, which is the salt that gives savour to the gross materialism of the age, a firm belief in the divine and national mysteries, sound morals and gratitude, and devotion to American ideals, have played a most prominent part in the history of this, our beloved country. (Applause.)
President-General Quinlan: I will be most grateful to Mr. McAdoo, if, before the next annual meeting of this Society, he will have the time and inclination to pen down the beautiful remarks that are in his brain tonight regarding the Irish in North Carolina.
His magnificent speech gives me a cleavage in my continuity of thought. There is a Society in the history of the city known as “St. Andrew’s.” This Society has $250,000 in its treasury. The illustrious Scotchmen have sought, by money, by force of will and by power, to perpetuate the traits and achievements of their race and they have done so.
Now I would appeal to all of you that when you feel the desire or when an occasion presents itself, you will aid us in the way the Scotchmen have aided their Society, by making a contribution to the American Irish Historical Society in order that we, too, may have an opportunity of exploiting our literary geniuses. This matter, ladies and gentlemen, I lay before you for your consideration and hope it may receive from you assimilative thought.
The most famous Irish societies in this country, the Hibernian Society in Boston, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in this city, were all founded and brought about by the intense patriotism and zeal of Irish Protestants. It has been most gratifying for us to hear tonight that force and eloquence from one who came from the Province of Ulster. Now we will hear a re-echo, probably equally as eloquent, from one who came from a neighboring county in Ireland and settled within the borders of New York State. I have much pleasure in presenting to you the Rev. J. Havergal Sheppard, D. D., a member of our Society and the next speaker on the program, whose subject is