aised in 1775. The
Pennsylvania line, which General Lee called "the line of Ireland,"
was almost entirely Irish, and the rosters of several of the Maryland
and Virginia regiments contain a remarkably large proportion of Irish
names, in some cases running as high as 60 per cent. It is computed
that the Irish furnished not less than a third of the whole American
forces. A common cause blotted out all old religious prejudices
between Irishmen in the American service. It was John Sullivan, of
New Hampshire, son of a Limerick schoolmaster, who began the revolt
by seizing the fort of William and Mary and its storehouses filled
with that powder which charged the guns at Bunker Hill in the
following year. It was Captain Jeremiah O'Brien, with his brothers,
who made the first sea attack on the British off Machias, Maine, in
May, 1775, an engagement which Fenimore Cooper calls "the Lexington
of the Seas." There were fifteen Celtic Irish names among the Minute
Men at the Battle of Lexington. Colonel Barrett, who commanded at
Concord, was Irish. There were 258 Celtic Irish names on the rosters
of the American forces at the battle of Bunker Hill. John Sullivan
had been made a major-general, thereafter to be a notable figure in
the war at Princeton, Trenton, Newport, and in his Indian campaign.
The Connecticut line was thick with Irish names. Around Washington
himself was a circle of brilliant Irishmen: Adjutant-General Edward
Hand leading his rifles, Stephen Moylan his dragoons, General Henry
Knox and Colonel Proctor at the head of his artillery, John Dunlop
his body-guard, Andrew Lewis his brigadier-general, Ephraim Elaine
his quartermaster, all of Irish birth or ancestry. Commodore John
Barry, born in Wexford in 1739 and bred to the sea, was a ship
captain in his early twenties, trading from Philadelphia. When the
Continental Congress met, he at once volunteered, and was given
command of the _Lexington_, the first American ship to capture a
British war vessel. Later, after gallant fighting on sea and land, he
was given command of the U.S. frigate _Alliance_, in which he crossed
the Atlantic to France, and fought and captured in a rattling battle
two British warships, the _Atlanta_ and the _Trepasay_. He was the
Father of the American navy, holding captain's certificate No. 1,
signed by Washington himself--the highest rank then issued.

General Richard Montgomery, the brave and able soldier who fell at
Quebec as he charged the hei