Cleat McAlister
Mr. Gagnon
History 4000
November 17, 2002
Irish
Immigration and the Transportation Revolution:
Economic,
Social, Political, and Religious Trends of a Developing Nation
For
many years leading up to 1850, Ireland was struck
with great famine. Crop failure in 1845
and an uncaring British aristocracy drove Ireland’s people
to the brink of destruction from starvation[1]. In 1845, one-third of the potato crop, the
main sustenance crop, failed causing the death of thousands of Ireland’s people and
leading thousands more to flee Ireland to avoid
starving to death[2]. The Irish that left Ireland in the
late 1840’s had survived dozens crop failures in thirty years[3]. Between 1820, the first year the United
States recorded statistical information
on immigration and 1840 about 35,000 Irish immigrants entered the United
States a year[4]. More than two million rural unskilled Irish
laborers came to North America because of
the potato famines during the 1840’s[5]. These numbers illustrate an unprecedented influx
in the United States population
especially considering a total population of only twenty million[6].
The
rural Irishman in America faced
constricted mobility and employment opportunity, due mainly to their
impoverished state when they arrived[7]. Their restricted mobility could also be
traced to the lack of experience with skills needed for survival on the
frontier, such as the ability to use a rifle and an ax[8]. Agricultural expansion by the Irish in America usually
filled lands that were deserted by frontiersman moving west[9]. A prejudice against agriculture existed among
the American Irish because they felt as if the land had rejected them in Ireland[10]. The restriction on mobility caused the rise
of cities and the rise of Irish in America to grow as
one[11]. The Irish, once the rural people of Ireland, became a
people of the city in America[12]. By the end of the Antebellum Period,
twenty-six percent of New York City’s
population consisted of Irish immigrants[13]. The concentration of Irish immigrants in the
cities of America made a
readily available workforce that could drive the transportation revolution.
The
wave of Irish immigration to America was
propelled by America’s growing
need to move goods. The transportation
revolution was at hand, and the flight of the Irish coincided with the American
demand for labor. Development of the
nation’s canals, roads, bridges, and railroads demanded an inexhaustible source
of physical labor that was mostly filled by the Irish[14]. What was necessary for both the Irish
immigrants and the developing America, a demand
and supply of labor, came together at this point. Describing the unbounded enthusiasm for
railroads, Alvarez refers to I. W. Warner’s 1848 Immigrants Guide
promoting the idea that the work force could be fully maintained for many years
completing railroads currently under construction[15]. The Irish brought the manpower to build America and with
them they brought religion, culture, and will that parallels the significance
of the early development of the railroad system in America. The Irish transformed the landscape and view
of the nation while connecting her from shore to shore by railroads with their
will[16]. This paper examines the significant trends
accompanying and resulting from the need of the states for transportation
growth and the needs of the Irish immigrants arriving on the American shore
during the Antebellum period. The two
needs converge and, as a result, create a new nation.
In
1817, Construction on the Erie Canal began and
so began the canal boom in America[17]. Extensive canal construction followed
including the Pennsylvania Portage and Canal System, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal[18]. The financial panic during 1837 and the
railroad revolution ended the canal boom, but by 1840 over 3,326 miles of
canals were completed in the United
States[19]. The railroad boom took an even firmer grasp
on America. In the early nineteenth century over nine
thousand miles of railroad were completed and began operating[20]. In thirty years, the United
States had created a massive railroad
network unrivaled anywhere in the world.
Lack
of transportation was the greatest barrier to economic development in Georgia, as it was
in all the states[21]. Many of the cotton centers were not close to
navigable rivers and shipment was expensive[22]. Travel on the early network of dirt roads,
bridges, and ferries were slow and at times impossible. In Georgia Railroad and Banking Company,
1833-1945, Mary G. Cumming describes how machinery to be delivered to the
Princeton Factory in Athens was stuck
in the mud in the winter of 1832 through 1833 and could not be moved until the
spring of 1833[23]. Maintenance of the roads and bridges was
difficult and everyone was affected by the slow and expensive methods of
transportation[24]. A letter in the Athenian in May 1831
complains of mail from Alabama taking a
month to reach Athens[25]. Publications of newspapers were even delayed
by slow mail services[26]. The cotton mills caused the need for growth
in Georgia
transportation[27]. The slow methods of transportation caused
freight to take a week or more to get from Augusta to Athens[28]. Freight sometimes stopped indefinitely during
bad weather, which led to high cost. Georgia considered
building extensive canal systems throughout the state until the railroad
revolution grasped the attention of Georgia
leaders. Governor Gilmer and Governor
Lumpkin caught the national trend of enthusiasm for railroad development in
order to make Georgia a pivotal
state of the Southeast and to make Atlanta the heart
of commerce[29]. By 1836, Georgia had joined
together with the transportation revolution[30]. Governor Lumpkin aggressively promoted the
idea of economic improvement by developing a railroad from the coast to the
mountains of Georgia to Mississippi[31]. Lumpkin believed that a developed railroad
system would make Georgia the
greatest center of commerce on the Atlantic[32]. Transportation fever had spread across the
state and the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia was granted
a charter to build a railroad from Savannah to Macon[33]. Augusta reacted
and the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company was given a charter to join Augusta and Athens[34]. During the 1850’s the Western and Atlantic
Railroad was built from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Atlanta and was
connected to the Georgia Railroad extending to Augusta[35]. The story of Athens
transportation is representative of a wave of development that was repeated
throughout the state and nation. The
passion of the American people to become an economic world power and to move
westward, and the vision of the possibilities to do so, became the major “trend
of the mind” as used by James Houstoun Johnston in Western and Atlantic
Railroad of the State of Georgia [36]. Even though Johnston was referring
to the people of Georgia, the trend
was a national one, and the impulses the same across the North and the South.
It
is clear that such extensive transportation development throughout the nation,
which was extremely labor intensive, demanded a phenomenal source of
labor. I have stated that the Irish was
the answer to the great demand for labor.
The Irish did find work in the textile factories, food processing
plants, sea ports, and some with experience from working in England, the mines
of the North, but for the young Irishman that was willing to travel, the
transportation revolution provided an unlimited supply of work when other
employment opportunities were unavailable.
Ireland, New York, and Boston were
markets for Irish labor where Irish were aggressively recruited for their labor
with mystifying offers of high wages, around a dollar a day, food, three meals
a day, lodging, and liquor[37]. The Irish usually came to America with
little money and no skills, but they brought the physical labor America needed,
and finding work as soon as possible was mandatory for survival[38]. The existing population of America despised
tough physical labor, but the Irish were able and willing bodies of the
required labor[39]. The Irish literally built the cities they populated
and supported their growth by building the transportation routes that allowed
commerce to expand[40].
The
Irish did the work that the native people America would not,
and that the master class in the South saw too risky to the health of their
investment in their slaves. The
wonderful life of working on the transportation routes presented to the Irish
laborer was a recruitment façade. The
reality was strenuous work that devoured the laborer, disturbingly high death
rates, subjection to the elements, exploitation by builders and suppliers of
necessities, poor living conditions, and rampant diseases[41]. The worker was responsible for his own
safety, and injured laborers were fired and left on their own[42]. Widows that had traveled with their husbands
as they worked on the railroad were also left to fend for themselves[43]. Builders would over hire in order to drive
down laborer’s wages[44]. And suppliers would exploit their monopoly
over the workers in shantytowns by charging outrageous prices[45]. Backbreaking can not describe the intensity
of the work demanded of the Irish.
Trees, sometimes with a diameter greater than seven feet, and their
stumps had to be removed by hand[46]. The workweek was six to seven days a week
from dawn till dusk[47]. The elements beat down on the workers
yearly. The Irish workers were subjected
to harsh cold during the winter and blazing heat during the summer. Diseases that are now all but annihilated
would sweep construction camps killing thousands[48]. Diseases, such as malaria, cholera, and
diphtheria, were rampant killers. The
construction camp, or shantytown, was an unsanitary, disease infested slum[49]. The Irish's shantytown and the Irish's city
slum were both extremely depraved, rancid, impoverished places to live. The harsh environment of railroad work killed
so many Irish laborers that the phrase “an Irishman was buried under every tie”
became a common reference to the death experienced by the Irish while
constructing the railroad systems of the United
States[50]. Although building the cities, roads, canals,
and railroads of a newly prospering industrial nation while enduring
unthinkable hardship and poverty, the Irish were targets of further
insult—nativism.
The
inferior classification that had been pressed upon the Irish in Great
Britain followed them to the American
shore. The Irish were considered to be
of an inferior class of human than other Americans. They were subjected to subrogation and
discrimination much like the African Americans and Chinese in America. Prejudice against the Irish propelled a surge
of the American idea of nativism.
Nativism is an irrational fear and hate of immigrants that usually stems
into violent condemnation. Nativism was
driven by economic tension because many Americans viewed immigration as a
source of competition for jobs, resources, and power, social tension because
Americans viewed immigrants as corrupters of their ideal democratic society
and, religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants. The Irish were presumed to be a destitute
race of people that lacked temperance, self-control, or morality. Many nativists saw the Irish as uneducated,
ill mannered and alien to everything American[51]. This prejudice the Irish experienced caused
them to band together furthering the fear, hate relationship between them and
the Americans. Across the nation,
Americans viewed the slum dwelling Irish a threat to democracy because the
American people saw the Irish as incapable of understanding the concept of
democracy[52]. The Irish were targets of violent riots,
extreme nativists’ publications, and campaigns promoted by nativist
organizations[53].
Nativism
evolved into a political party, the Know-Nothing Party founded in 1845, whose
sole purpose was the opposition to immigration and Catholicism[54]. Anti-Irish sentiment became a political
issue. Even the established Federalist
and Whig parties campaigned against the Irish and Catholicism to turn the tide
in elections.[55] Laws were proposed to restrict immigration,
to create barriers in achieving citizenship, and deny naturalized citizens
political office[56]. Protestant native Americans wanted to
monopolize the political power in the United
States[57]. But the political attention of the nation
shifted away from nativism with the approach of the Civil War[58].
Ironically, ten years later many Irish
Americans lost their lives in defending the Union that had
not wanted to grant them citizenship[59],
and the immigrants of the South rallied to the battle call of the Confederacy[60]. An Irish regiment from Georgia successfully
defended Marye’s Heights in the Battle of Fredericksburg[61]. The Irish’s love for the country they built
with their sweat and blood would not fade regardless of the nation’s contempt
for them and their Roman Catholic religion.
Protestant
American anti-Catholicism intensified the prejudice against the Irish as a
people. “In the nativist view, the words
Irish and Catholic were synonymous and equally odious”[62]. Anti-Catholic literature became a major
industry[63]. Much of the content was extreme, such as a
publication stating that the greatest enemy of the Republic was the Roman
Catholic Church[64]. The anti-Irish Catholic campaign is revealed
even in advertisements for domestic help: “no Irish,” “anyone but a Catholic,”
“Irish people need not apply,” “any country or color except Irish”[65]. The economic, social, political, and
religious oppression of the Irish erupted into a storm of violence on both
sides.
The Irish
Catholic slums and the Catholic churches were subject to nativist violence[66]. In Philadelphia in 1844 a
Protestant mob burned homes and dynamited churches when a Catholic bishop
requested public financing of a Catholic school[67]. Significant violence continued in Boston, New York, New
Orleans, and other cities throughout the
nation into the 1850’s[68]. Continuing for decades after 1830, violence
against Roman Catholics and specifically against Catholic immigrants is a part
of the America scene[69]. In 1831 New York
City’s Saint Mary’s Church was set on fire[70]. Catholic churches in Massachusetts and Ohio were
bombed. In 1834 in Boston, a convent
was burned[71]. Such scenes of violence were common phenomena
between the Catholics and Protestants across the nation. The nativist, however, could not thwart the
Irish faith in their Catholic religion, and indeed that faith became a source
of integration and power for the Irish in American culture[72].
The
prejudice of nativism and subjection to harsh working conditions did not go
unanswered by the Irish. The Irish
aggressively fought for economic, social, political, and religious equality,
often using violence as a bargaining tactic.
As early as 1817 in New York City, a group
of Irish laborers demanding political representation stormed Tammany Hall
disrupting a caucus of party leaders insisting that an Irishman be named to
Congress. When rejected, a general fight
broke out[73]. Violence and unrest was continuous between
workers, mostly Irish laborers, and management in the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in the
late 1820’s and 1830’s[74]. The Irish organized secret terrorist groups
to control management and other workers[75]. These terrorist groups controlled contracts,
employment, and production with violence[76]. In 1836 on a road between Forsyth and Macon Georgia, men in
passing wagons mocked Irish laborers. They assaulted the next group of wagoners
that happened to pass by. The Irishmen
killed a man and a horse and beat the other passengers badly[77].
Violence
had become an integrated part of Irish life.
Violence also characterized the canal and railroad work camps. A riot among Irish laborers arose from an
argument between the Cork men and
Kerry men. The cavalry was called in and
quickly quelled the riots without any loss of life[78]. The next month, a fight broke out among Irish
railroad workers in Cobb County killing
two and wounding six others[79]. Irish gangs fought each other on election
days[80]. Soon, the Irish found their power in the vote
instead of the fist[81].
The Irish
immigrants carried America on their
back through a time of rapid growth and change.
The industrialization of America and the
economic growth that followed, made possible by the transportation revolution,
was only possible because of the emigration of the Irish to America. Although not recognized at the time for their
sacrifices and contributions to the United
States, monuments to these warriors of
labor are in every corner of the United
States today. These monuments are as simple as a graveyard
by the tracks of the Columbia-Philadelphia Railroad restored in 1994 and marked
so that all that pass may see the Irish sacrifice that went into every foot of
track[82]
or as grand as the Celtic cross monument erected at the burial site of Irish
workers in Funks Grove, Illinois, on Workers Memorial Day in 2000[83]. Every canal, road, bridge, railroad, and city
in America is a
constant tribute to the Irish people who came to America in the
early nineteenth century, as are the many books written about the
Irish-American.
Links to Sites of Related Interest
Irish
in America
Irish Memorial
Forgotten Irish
The Making of a Melting Pot
End Notes
[3] William
Shannon, The American Irish (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963), 27.
[6]Maldwyn Jones,
American Immigration (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960),
94.
[15]Eugene
Alvarez, Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828-1860 (Tuscaloosa:
The University of Alabama Press, 1974), 13.
[17]Donald
Cole, Handbook of American History (New York: Harcourt, Brase, and World
Inc., 1968), 100.
[21] Lawrence Hepburn, The
Georgia History Book (Athens: Institute of Government The University of
Georgia, 1982), 71.
[23]David
Patterson, Frontier Link With the World: The Upson County Railroad (Macon:
Mercer University Press, 1998), 10.
[24]Ernest
Hynds, Antebellum Athens and Clarke County Georgia (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1974), 36.
[29]James
Johnston, Western and Atlantic Railroad
of the State of Georgia (Atlanta:
Stein Printing Co., 1932), 5.
[35]Mary Frech
and William Swinder, Chronology and Documentary Handbook of the State of Georgia (New York:
Oceana Publication Inc., 1973), 23.
[37] Edward
Wakin, Enter the Irish-American (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,
1976), 50.
[46]Richard
Wallace, “Building the Canal in Shelby County,” Shelby County Ohio Historical
Society, 1998. http://www.shelbycountyhistory.org/schs/canalbuildingcanal.htm.
[49] Richard
Wallace, “Building the Canal in Shelby County,” Shelby County Ohio Historical
Society, 1998. http://www.shelbycountyhistory.org/schs/canalbuildingcanal.htm.
[52]Edward
Purcell, Immigration (Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1995), 35.
[55] Lawrence
McCaffrey, The Irish Diaspora in America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 94.
[74]Peter Way, Common
Labor: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 212.
[77]Athens (Georgia) Southern
Banner, 31
December 1836, p. 2. column 4.
[78]Athens (Georgia) Southern
Banner, 1 March 1839, p. 2.
column 4.
[79]Athens (Georgia) Southern
Banner, 27 April
1839, p. 2. column 5.
[83]Mike
Matejka, “Beneath the Celtic Cross: Irish Immigrants Who Built the Railroads of
Central Illinois,” Labors Heritage
2001. Private e-mail message to cleatharrison@aol.com
from abcclio@sb1.abc-clio.com. 12 November 2002.
Works Cited
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Cole, Donald. Handbook of
American History. New York: Harcourt, Brase, and World
Inc., 1968.
Frech, Mary and Swinder,
William. Chronology and Documentary Handbook of the State of Georgia New York: Oceana Publication Inc.,
1973.
Hepburn, Lawrence. The Georgia History Book. Athens: Institute of Government
The University of Georgia, 1982.
Hynds, Ernest. Antebellum
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American Irish. New York: The Macmillan Company,
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Southern Banner 31
December 1836, p. 2. column 4.
Southern Banner 1
March 1839, p. 2. column 4.
Southern Banner 27
April 1839, p. 2. column 5.
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Irish Neighborhood”. In The Bethel Courier, Volume V, No. 1. http://www.bethelhistorical.org/neighbors.htm.
March 1981.
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the Canal in Shelby County”. Shelby County Ohio Historical Society, 1998.
http://www.shelbycountyhistory.org/schs/canalbuildingcanal.htm.
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