St Patrick's day is one of my favorite holidays. It is such a fun day of the week. Green is a happy color too so it is fun to see everyone in green one day a year. Irish is in my blood. My father is Irish and my mother was Latvian. 
In homeschool we touch on St Patrick's day and have always made it more about fun, like baking cookies with green icing and things like that.
However this year we did a unit study on the Irish Immigration In America. This was a very interesting and there was a lot of history and critical thinking that took place. I was really surprised at how much I never learned about this part of history in public school. I think there was less than a chapter on the Irish immigration in history textbooks.
Irish Immigration played a very important role in our new country. Irish people immigrated to America for many reasons but they all came for a better life and a chance at the American Dream.
The first wave of Irish immigrants were Scottish-Irish and they were mostly men who were educated and of sturdy stock ( that means strong).
The Irish immigrating to new America were second only to the English. Those early immigrants came here for religious freedom just like so many others during this period. Most of them became indentured servants in order to get here. They easily assimilated into America and became successful leading independent lives. The settled mostly in Pennsylvania and the other middle colonies. This all took place in the early 1700's.
President Andrew Jackson and President Ronald Reagan traced their roots back to this early group of Irish Immigrants.
Not all early Irish immigrants were poor. In fact, the wealthy Charles Carrol of Carrollton was the grandson of Charles Carrol. The grandson signed the declaration of independence.
But in 1845 we all know that the Potato blight caused a very bad famine in Ireland. In the short period of five years over one million Irish people died in this famine in Ireland and another 500,000 came to America. Ireland lost so much of its' population during this period, right before the famine and after.
Records show that Ireland had a population of 8.2 million people in 1841. But just ten years later the population dropped down to 6.6 million and by 1891 there were only 4.7 million Irish left in Ireland.
About 4.5 million Irish immigrated here between 1820 and 1930. Between 1820 and 1860 the Irish population in America was one third of all immigrants! That was an amazing stat to discover. In the 1840's they were HALF of all the immigrants.
Before the famine most all the immigrants were strong males, after the famine it was entire families and after that it was the Irish women.
But it was not all bliss for the new Irish coming to America in the 1800's. Just think about how poor they were when they landed in America. They had nothing left in Ireland, people were dying all around them and just trying to find passage here to America on a ship back them was no easy task. The poorest of the poor were arriving here by the thousands. They were so poor that they could not go far to settle so they ended up staying close to where they embarked from the ships they traveled over here on. These Irish did not have the same fortune as the ones who came here in the 1700's. In fact, they were so poor that several families would live together in the same house, some would live in the attics, others made shelters in the alleys.
During this time there were more Irish in New York City than there were in Dublin Ireland. Of course, this leads to uncleanliness, sewage problems, lack of running water and then diseases like cholera and typhoid fever. There were also a lot of social problems like crime and alcoholism.
This created a lot of problems with being accepted by the other citizens that were not Irish. In fact, the Irish were the most hated group of people outside of the free blacks that lived in New York City. The problems did not stop there though. There were entire formal groups that were anti- Irish. There has not been any other group of people more abused and hated than the Irish and the free blacks and black slaves. The KuKluxKlan antagonized the Irish. They were discriminated against.
The Irish were so poor and industrious that they would take all the jobs no one else wanted. They took the lowest paying jobs. They worked in the coal mines and they built the railroads we have still today. There is an old saying, " There is an Irish man buried under every tie". Building the railroad was one of the most dangerous jobs so many people would not take these jobs but the Irish did and many, many of them died building the railroads.
You would think reading how similar blacks and Irish were treated that they would come together and be empathetic but instead they instead were pushed into competition for jobs. Both groups had the same low social and economic status but both also climbed the economic ladder and advanced in sports, entertainment, religion and politics.
What is also interesting to note is that they had similar social pathologies- violence, broken homes and alcoholism. Instead of coming together the two groups continued in competition on all levels. The blacks joined the Republican party and the Irish joined the Democrat party.
The Irish that moved to the south again took the most dangerous and low paying jobs of building canals and railroads. The slaveholders viewed blacks as valuable property so blacks were prohibited from doing dangerous jobs or life threatening jobs. So the dangerous jobs went to the Irish who were upset that they did not have any protections.
Then in 1863 it got even worse, the tensions between the Irish and the free blacks. The Conscription Act was the draft for all white men between the ages of 20 and 45 into the Union Army. But free black men could "volunteer" for the army but could not be drafted. White men who had money would bribe doctors to say something was wrong with them to avoid the draft. They also would get to legally hire "substitutes" to go in their place. This meant that Irish men were drafted without getting any of these ways out. The inequities in the draft code increased racial tensions. There were draft riots during this time with violence. You can find out more in the Library of Congress online.
When you go back into studying more about Irish history they were conquered people in their own country, much like the Scotts were. The movie Braveheart portrays what life was like under English rule in Ireland and Scotland. The British controlled everything all the while saying the Irish were free. Through all this one of the parts of Irish identity was the ability to organize and a sense of cohesion.
Here in America that meant they would get into politics and not surprisingly the unions. Even when John F Kennedy was running for President there was still a lot of discrimination against Irish and Catholics. Yet, he became President of this great country. The Irish worked hard, overcame discrimination and did assimilate into America. They have contributed a lot of amazing talent and industrious successes. There should be an Irish American week.
Homeschool is great because we can stop whatever we are doing and really learn about the subject. Our son wanted to know more about how the railroads were build and wanted to know why did people die building the railroad. That becomes then another research project. You get to go at your own pace and what we parents learn as we teach is such a blessing. I love to learn and just as our son does, I want to know everything:).
Happy St Patrick's Day!
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