Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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This short sketch is eloquent enough with reference to the
position in which the poor Irish immigrant found himself on
landing on the shores of the New World. His faith he found
proscribed as severely almost as in his own country. He was
compelled to conceal it; and, even had he been free to make open
profession of it, he could find no minister of his creed
tolerated anywhere. The country was a perfect blank as far as
the ceremonies of his religion went. In his native land he knew
where to find a priest; he was advised of the day and of the
precise place where he might assist at the sacred mysteries of
his religion; and, were it in the cave or on the mountain-top,
in the bog or the morass, he knew that there he could adore and
receive his God as truly and as worthily as in the magnificent
domes looking proudly to heaven under Catholic skies. But in
British North America, except in a few counties of Maryland,
where the true faith had once been openly planted and taken root,
where some clergymen of his own creed were even still to be
found, though forced to conceal, or at least not expose
themselves too freely, he knew that elsewhere it was useless for
him to inquire, not only for a sacred edifice where he might go
to thank his God on landing, but even to look for a priest
should he find himself at the point of death.

At the present day it is almost impossible to give any details
and move the reader by a picture of the complete spiritual
destitution of the Irish immigrant in his new home. Here and
there, however, we meet, in reading, facts apparently
insignificant in themselves, which at first sight seem to have
no connection whatever with the subject on hand, yet which, with
the aid of reflection, throw quite a flood of light on it, as
convincing as it is unexpected. Take, for instance, the
following:

"In the last year of the administration of Andros in
Massachusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin,
a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having
stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the
laundress, a friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English,
like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false
accusation. Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, became
bewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, the
youngest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded in
equally arresting public attention. . . . Cotton Mather went to
pray by the side of one of them, and, lo! the child lost her
hearing till prayer was over. What was to be done? The four
ministers of Boston and the one of Charlestown assembled in
Goodwin's house, and spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. In
consequence, the youngest child, the little one of five years
old, was 'delivered.' But if the ministers could thus by prayer
'deliver' a possessed child, there must have been a witch. The
honor of the ministers required a prosecution of the affair; and
the magistrates, William Stoughton being one, with a 'vigor'
which the united ministers commended as 'just,' made 'a
discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culprit
was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin,
who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her
any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought
'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange
answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in
excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the
prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's
Prayer in English; she could repeat the Pater Noster fluently
enough, but not quite correctly; so, the ministers and Goodwin's
family had the satisfaction of getting her condemned as a witch
and executed."

The position of this poor woman, who had never openly declared
herself a Catholic, but which fact the people were led to infer
from various circumstances, expresses the condition of all Irish
immigrants at the time. A further fact recorded by the same
historian shows what the feeling toward Catholics was at the
time in Massachusetts:

"The girl, who knew herself to be a deceiver, had no remorse,
and to the ministers it never occurred that vanity and love of
power had blinded their judgment."

The reason was plain: Glover was a Catholic. How could the girl
be expected to feel remorse for having brought about her death?
How could the ministers feel the least concern because their
"vanity and love of power" had effected the hanging of such a
creature?--"a vessel of wrath," in any case; a "predestined
reprobate," beyond doubt, whose ignominious death on earth and
eternal punishment afterward were "a true source of joy in
heaven and an increase of glory for the infinite justice of God,
" if there was any truth in Calvinism.

Another fact, as suggestive as the above, is found in McGee's
"Irish Settlers in America:" "The first Catholic church that we
find in Pennsylvania, after Penn's suppression of them in 1708,
was connected with the house of a Miss Elizabeth McGauley, an
Irish lady, who, with several of her tenantry, settled on land
on the road leading from Nicetown to Frankfort. Near the site of
this ancient sanctuary stood a tomb, inscribed, 'John Michael
Brown, ob. 15th December, A. D. 1750. R. I. P.' He had been a
priest residing there incognito."

Miss E. McGauley was not poor, like Glover. On coming to America
with some of her tenantry, she secured herself beforehand
against the difficulty of practising her religion; and, knowing
well that no priest was to be found in the country, she brought
one with her. All the remainder of his life did this minister of
God reside in her house incognito, keeping the ministry
intrusted to him for the service of all a profound secret. He
never attempted, probably, to enlighten his prejudiced and
ignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and the
benefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of
the house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the
secret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I.
P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither
Quaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved
doubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was a
priest.

How many Catholics scattered over the broad colony of
Pennsylvania, immigrants like Miss McGauley, but unlike her in
their poverty, and therefore unable to hire a clergyman, never
knew that they might unburden their consciences and enjoy the
consolations of their religion, by travelling a hundred miles or
so to the house "on the road leading from Nicetown to
Frankfort?" How many lived and died within a short distance, and
never knocked at the door, owing to their ignorance of the class
of inmates? Thus, although there were some ministers of God in
the country, their number was so small, and they were so far
distant from each other, that their labors were utterly
unavailing for the great body of the Catholic immigrants, who
would have rejoiced to throw themselves at their feet, and ease
their hearts and purify their souls by confession.

Some Irishmen, it is true, had emigrated before such concealment
was requisite, in Maryland at least, where an asylum for all had
been opened by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic. Thus, the Carrolls
had settled in Prince George County. They were at liberty to
make open use of the services of the English fathers of the
Society of Jesus, who for a long time officiated undisguisedly
among their English Catholic flocks; but, as was seen, after the
Revolution of 1688, Catholics were disfranchised in Maryland
even, their religious rites proscribed, and penalties enacted
against the open profession of their worship.

Thus, concealment became a necessity, there also; the policy of
keeping the existence of clergymen and the celebration of the
holy mysteries secret had to be adopted there as in other
colonies. The Carroll family, like Miss Elizabeth McGauley, gave
refuge in their house to a minister of their own religion, and
it was in such a chapel-house that John Carroll was born, on the
8th of January, 1735--the first Bishop and Archbishop of
Baltimore.

It is therefore no matter for wonder that the number of children
of the Church in North America did not increase in proportion to
the number of Catholic immigrants; on the contrary, the
posterity of the majority of those who chose the British
colonies, for their home was lost to her. The immigrants
themselves, we are confident, never lost their faith. Although
living for years without any exterior help, without receiving a
word of instruction or advice, without the celebration of any
religious rite whatever, or the reception of any sacrament, yet,
faith was too deeply rooted in their minds and hearts to be ever
eradicated, or shaken even.

But, though they themselves clung fast to their faith in the
midst of so many adverse circumstances, what of their children?

There is no doubt that many of them did, individually, every
thing possible to transmit that faith to their children; but all
they could do was to speak privately, to warn then against
dangers, and set up before them the example of a blameless life.
Not only was there no priest to initiate them into the mysteries,
granted by Christ to the redeemed soul; there was not even a
Catholic school-master to instruct them. Even the "hedge-school"
could not be set on foot. Books were unknown; Catholic
literature, in the modern sense, had not yet been born; there
was no vestige of such a thing beyond, perhaps, an occasional
old, worn, and torn, yet dearly-prized and carefully-concealed
prayer-book, dating from the happy days of the Confederation of
Kilkenny.

There is no reason, then, for surprise in the fact that,
although the families of those first Irish settlers were
numerous and scattered over all the district which afterward
became the Middle and Southern States, only a faint tradition
remained among many of them that they really belonged to the old
Church and "ought to be Catholics." How often was this the case
thirty years ago, particularly in the South!

It would not be right to conclude that all this was a pure and
unmitigated loss to the Church of Christ. Later on, we shall
have to speak of more numerous and serious losses: but a few
words on this first one may not be thrown away.

As in the material world an infinite number of germs are lost,
and quantities of seeds, wafted on the breeze from giant trees
and humble plants, fall and perish on a barren rock, in the
eddies of a swift-running brook, or, oftener still, on the hard
and unkind soil on which they have happened to alight; so that,
out of a thousand germs, a few only find every thing congenial
to their growth, and attain to the full size allotted them by
Nature --nevertheless, despite this loss, the species is not
only preserved, but so multiplied as to produce on the beholder,
in after-time, the impression that, not only no loss has been
sustained, but that much has been gained. So is it with the
Catholic Church in general, and in particular with the momentous
events now being considered.

The cultivated field of the "father of the family" was about to
be extended over a new and vast area. A whole continent was to
be "fenced around," and "olive-trees," and "fig-trees," and all
plants useful and ornamental, were destined to flourish in that
vast garden to the end of time. The great and eternal Father was,
by his providence, directing the mighty operation from above,
and marking the various points of the compass to which the
floating germs were to be wafted. He knew that he was planting a
new garden for his Son, who would, as usual, be the first
husbandman, and employ many workmen to help him.

How could it be expected that all would be gain without loss,
when the harvest-time had not yet arrived, and the "enemy" was
busy sowing "tares" in all directions? Was not the work human as
well as divine? and, as human, did not the work partake of the
imperfection of human things?

The continent had evidently been predestined to form one of the
strongest branches of the great Catholic tree. Discovered before
the modern heresies of Protestantism had shown themselves, it
was to bring into the fold of Christ new nations, when some old
ones were to be cut off and wither away. This has long ago been
pointed out; but another mighty design of Providence there was
which only now begins to show itself.

Columbus was in search of Asia and the holy sepulchre when he
stumbled on the New World. Nor was the idea of his great mind
altogether a delusion. The new continent was in future ages to
be used as the highway from Europe to the Orient; China, Japan,
India, vast regions filled with innumerable multitudes of human
beings, had, so far, scarcely been touched, could scarcely be
touched, by Catholicism coming from Europe. In fact it was too
far away, and the means of intercommunication were too
inadequate. The holy Catholic Church increases as "things which
grow;" a few husbandmen--missionaries--are required to set the
first seedlings and plants in the soil, to water them, watch
over them, and see that they thrive and flourish; the rest of
the process is a matter of seeds wafted by the wind, falling and
taking root in a fertile soil, which has been already prepared
for their reception. If there were no other means of propagation
than the toil and sweat of the husbandman, how long would it
take to cover the whole earth with vegetation? The first
propagation of Christianity was done in this way; hence it took
more than ten centuries to Christianize Europe. In the fifth
century, Rome was still thoroughly pagan. Were the vast regions
of that dim, far-away East to undergo a similar slow and painful
process, necessitating an immense amount of labor, centuries and
centuries in duration? God hastened the process by adding to it
the wafting of seeds, and America was to be the vast nursery
from which those seeds were to come. It was from that long and
alternately widening and narrowing belt of land, running down
the sea from north to south, that the Japhetic race was to
invade the "tents of Sem."

Thus was the dream of Columbus to be realized. Asia would be
reached by Europe, of which America would form a part. The east
of Asia would become contiguous to a real European population,
large masses of which would easily come in contact with the
Mongolian and Malay races of their immediate neighborhood, steam
and modern improvements in travel reducing the intervening
distance to a matter of a few days. Thus the Japhetic movement
could be carried out on a large scale, and European civilization
come to supersede the obsolete manners of those old and effete
races of Eastern Asia. The unity of mankind would be vindicated
against its blasphemers; and, to crown the whole, Christianity
would find its way back to the cradle of man, then, to its own
birthplace, Calvary and the sepulchre of Christ. Thus would the
conjectural vision of the great Genoese become only an
explanation of the old prophecy of the second father of mankind.1
(1 The reader will understand that all this is merely "a view,
" and not given as a pure interpretation of Scripture or past
history.)

Thus would the Church at last become rigorously Catholic, and
not as some theologians imagined, in their desire to make actual,
incomplete facts coincide with a far wider theory, only
Catholic by approximation.

If it were allowed us to read the designs of Providence
reverently, we might say, without presumption, that it seems
such is to be future history, although simple conjecture may
produce too strong an impression on our minds. But, at the
period of which we speak, shortly after the middle of the last
century, any one who would have spoken thus would have been
justly deemed a visionary. The south of America, though
possessed of the true religion, seemed inert; the North was
already showing signs of an intense future activity, but all
opposed to the truth. God was about to change those appearances,
and, by infusing the Irish element into the North, produce, in a
comparatively short space of time, the wonderful phenomenon
which we witness.

Yet, so short-sighted are we, that some are almost staggered in
their faith, because the children of the earliest Irish
emigrants to this country, were apparently lost to the Church.

Nevertheless, several circumstances might be brought forward to
show that a real gain accrued to the Church from these lost
children of the first Irish settlers. How many prejudices, so
deeply rooted in the country as to seem ineradicable, owe their
destruction to them! How many harsh and uncharitable feelings
against Catholics were smoothed away or softened down by their
instrumentality!

Those men who, in after-life, remembered that they "ought to be
Catholics," were not ready to accept, on the word of a "minister,"
all the absurd calumnies spread against the Church throughout
those vast regions. They had heard, by a kind of tradition, kept
alive in their families, of what their ancestors had formerly
suffered, and they at least were not inclined to join in the
universal denunciation of a creed which they were conscious
"ought to be" their own.

Who shall say whether it is not the old Catholic blood, running
in the veins of these children of Irish Catholic parents, which
has been mainly instrumental in creating that spirit of true
liberality which inspires the honorable conduct of the majority
of the American people, and in which the Church has at all times
found her safety?

It is certain that there is a vast difference between that
American spirit and the atmosphere of distrust pervading other
countries, and that the rapid spread of the Church throughout
the broad regions of the Union has been singularly favored by
the soft breeze of a liberal and kindly feeling so common to
those even who are not born within the fold. And that the
children of Irish parents, themselves lost to the Church, have
exercised great influence from the start, in that regard, cannot,
we think, be denied.

But, perhaps, too much space has been devoted to that first
emigration from Ireland; it is time to come to a more recent
period of which there are more certain and positive accounts.

There is no need to speak of the happy change effected in the
position of the Catholic Church in America by the Revolution;
Washington, in his reply to the address of the Catholics of the
country, has given expression to the feelings of the nation in
terms so well known that they require no comment.

From that date commences the real history of the Catholic Church
in North America, outside of the provinces originally settled by
the French and Spaniards. The influx of Irish immigrants now
attracts our chief attention.

From the year 1800, when the "Union" was effected between
England and Ireland, the number of immigrants increased suddenly
and rapidly, and the situation of the new-comers on their
arrival was very different from that of their predecessors. They
found liberty not only proclaimed, but established; few churches
indeed, but, such as there were, known and open, and a bishop
and clergymen already practising their ministry.

Before entering upon the extent, nature, and effects of this
second Irish immigration--which may be studied from documents
existing--it will be well to say a few words on the elements
which constituted the Catholic body when first organized. We are
concerned, it is true, with the new element introduced by the
great movement of which we begin to speak; but we are far from
undervaluing other sources of life, which not only affected the
Church at its birth in the United States, but have continued to
act upon her ever since with more or less of energy. The reader
should not imagine that, by not speaking of them, we are unjust
or blind to their efficiency; they simply lie without the scope
of our plan.

In the North the French, and in the South the Spanish
missionaries, had imparted to Catholicity a vitality which could
not be extinguished; but its operations were almost entirely
confined to limits outside those which circumscribe the field of
our investigations. The French element, however, grew into
prominence even at the outset within those limits, either
through the acquisition of Louisiana, or in consequence of the
French immigration during the terrible revolution of last
century. It is only necessary to open the pages of Mr. R. H.
Clarke's recently-published "Lives of the American Bishops," to
be struck with the importance of that element. It may be said
that, for the first twenty-five years of the republic, French
prelates and clergymen, together with several American
Marylanders, were intrusted with the care of the infant Church.
Ireland seems to have had scarcely any office to fulfil in that
great work, save through the humble exertions of a few devoted
but almost unknown missionaries; so that, when bishops of Irish
birth were first chosen, they were either taken from Ireland
itself, as was Dr. England, Bishop Kelly, of Richmond, or
Conwell, of Philadelphia, or from the monasteries of Rome, as
were Bishops Connolly and Concanen, of New York. Bishop Egan, of
Philadelphia, can scarcely be called an exception, as he had
only spent a very few years in this country when he was elevated
to the episcopal dignity. The German element showed itself only
in Pennsylvania.

It was under circumstances such as these that that stream of
desolate people began to flow, spreading gradually through
immense regions, and bringing with it only its unconquerable
faith.

From the "mustard-seed" a noble tree was to spring up; but as
yet it was only a weak sapling. In 1785, Bishop Carroll made an
estimate of the Catholic population of the States: "In Maryland,
seventeen thousand; in Pennsylvania, over seven thousand; and,
as far as information could be obtained, in other States, about
fifteen hundred." New York City could not yet boast of a hundred
Catholics.

Like all things durable and mighty, the first swelling of that
great wave was slow and silent, and scarcely perceptible, until
little by little the ripple spread over the vast ocean.

The first apparent causes have been well expressed by T. D.
McGee, in his "Irish Settlers:" "The breaking out of the French
War in 1793, and the degrading legislative Union of 1800, had
deprived many of bread, and all of liberty at home, and made the
mechanical as well as the agricultural class embark to cross the
Atlantic.

"Hitherto the Irish had colonized, sowed and reaped, fought,
spoken, and legislated in the New World, if not always in
proportion to their numbers, yet always to the measure of their
educational resources. Now they are about to plant a new emblem -
-the Cross--and a new institution--the Church--throughout the
American Continent. For, the faith of their fathers they did not
leave behind them; nay, rather, wheresoever six Irish roof-trees
rise, there you will find the cross of Christ reared over all,
and Celtic piety and Celtic enthusiasm, all sighs and tears,
kneeling before it."

Let us look at a few particular signs of the coming of this
great wave in its first scarcely perceptible movement.

"John Timon was born at Conewago, Pennsylvania, February 12,
1797, and baptized on the 17th of the same month; his parents,
James Timon and Margaret Leddy, had quite recently arrived in
this country from Ireland, and were from Belturbet, County Cavan.
A family of ten children, of whom John was the second son,
blessed the Catholic household of these pious parents."--(Lives
of American Bishops.)

"Francis Xavier Gartland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1805;
he came to America, while yet a child, and made his studies at
Mount St. Mary's, Emmettsburg."--(Ibid.)

"John B. Fitzpatrick was born in Boston, November 1, 1812. His
parents emigrated from Ireland, and settled in Boston in 1805."--
(Ibid.)

What did the parents of the future bishop find on their arrival
at Boston? In the year previous, the first Catholic congregation
was assembled in that city by the Abbe La Poitre, a French navy-
chaplain, who had remained in America after the departure of the
French fleet, which rendered such powerful assistance in the
struggle for American independence. In 1808, four years before
the birth of him who was destined to wear the mitre, the
Catholics had obtained the old "French Church" in School Street,
which was probably a Calvinist meeting house.

Another wavelet of a precious kind was the following: "Bishop
Lanigan was meditating" (in Ireland) "the establishment of a
religious community in the city of Kilkenny, and designed Miss
Alice Lalor for one of its future members. But, in 1797, her
parents emigrated from Ireland and settled in America, and she
felt it to be her duty . . . . to accompany them. But she
promised the bishop to return in two years. On arriving at
Philadelphia, she became acquainted with the Reverend Leonard
Neale. . . . Feeling convinced that it was not the design of
Providence that she should abandon America for Ireland, Father
Neale released her from her promise to return to Kilkenny, in
order that she might become his cooperator in the foundation of
a religious order in the United States (the Visitation Nuns)."--
(Ibid.)