lism in Ireland; Cashman: Life of Michael Davitt; T.P.
O'Connor: The Parnell Movement; Joseph Denieffe: Recollections of the
Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood; Articles in the Catholic
Encyclopedia; Report of the Knights of Columbus, 1914; The Tidings,
Los Angeles, 7th annual edition.

THE IRISH IN THE UNITED STATES

By MICHAEL J. O'BRIEN,

_Historiographer, American Irish Historical Society_.

Students of early American history will find in the Colonial records
abundant evidence to justify the statement of Ramsay, the historian
of South Carolina, when he wrote in 1789, that:

"The Colonies which now form the United States may be considered as
Europe transplanted. Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Germany,
Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, and Italy furnished the
original stock of the present population, and are generally supposed
to have contributed 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."

It will be astonishing to one who looks into the question to find
that, in face of all the evidence that abounds in American annals,
showing that our people were here on this soil fighting the battles
of the colonists, and in a later day of the infant Republic, thus
proving our claim to the gratitude of this nation, America has
produced men so ignoble and disingenuous as to say that the Irish who
were here in Revolutionary days "were for the most part heartily
loyal," that "the combatants were of the same race and blood", and
that the great uprising became, in fact, "a contest between
brothers"!

Although many writers have made inquiries into this subject, nearly
all have confined themselves to the period of the Revolution. We are
of "the fighting race", and in our enthusiasm for the fighting man
the fact seems to have been overlooked that in other noble fields of
endeavor, and in some respects infinitely more important, men of
Irish blood have occupied prominent places in American history, for
which they have received but scant recognition. The pioneers before
whose hands the primeval forests fell prostrate; the builders, by
whose magic touch have sprung into existence flourishing towns and
cities, where once no sounds were heard save those of nature and her
wildest offspring; the orators who roused the colonists into activity
and showed them the way to achieve their independence; the
schoolmasters who imparted to