Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

the Irish at home and black slaves, of which there were many in the southeast US Tidewater States. At the time of the first US Census in 1790 non-white slaves accounted for a sizable portion of the population and economic success of those southern states.

Percentage of population that were slaves

State

Crops

Total population

Virginia

Tobacco Tobacco, cotton Tobacco

747,610

39.1%

North Carolina

395,005

25.5%

Maryland

319,728

32.2%

Rice, indigo, cotton Rice, indigo, cotton

South Carolina

249,073

43.0%

Georgia

82,548

35.5%

Overproduction of tobacco exhausted the soil in Tidewater States (Maryland, Virginia, N Carolina) leading to crop failures and a redundant slave population that became indispensable to the production of cotton as it moved to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in the early 1800s. Slaves were transferred westward, and slave ownership and auctions would persist through the American Civil War. In January 1792 the Northern Star, the United Irishmen newspaper, was founded in Belfast and reflected the enlightened thinking of that time. The newspaper was well-respected, and circulated well in Dublin and London, frequently expressing antislavery sentiment. Wolfe Tone in his An Address to the People of Ireland in 1796 declared his opposition to slavery. Subsequently Daniel O’Connell, sensitive to the plight of the underprivileged, was also a firm abolitionist and spoke out decisively against slavery. Frederick Douglas, the escaped slave and orator, held O’Connell in high regard and, at the age of twenty-seven, spent time with him when he visited Ireland in 1845 . Douglas spent three weeks during that year in Cork City, where he gave warmly accepted talks to antislavery groups. Slavery in the 1800s doubtless deterred some Irish emigrants away from the South and toward the Northeastern USA and BNA. While importation of slaves into the US was banned in 1808, problems for the expanding resident slave community persisted until the end of the American Civil War in 1865. 1803. The Louisiana Purchase. Spain, who controlled New Orleans and the lower Mississippi Valley in the late 1700s, terminated concessions with the US in 1798, threatening free navigation on the Mississippi River. US citizens were already populating the Ohio River Valley east of the Mississippi on which they relied for trade of farm produce and manufactured goods. The US retaliated with the construction in Pittsburgh of two warships, the President Adams and the Senator Ross, effectively neutralizing Spanish belligerence. The latter vessel was considered superior to any Spanish vessel on the Mississippi (Ambler, 1932, 84-5). Opportunity knocked for the US in 1802 with Napoleon’s acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from Spain inspiring President Thomas Jefferson to negotiate with France for the purchase of New Orleans for up to 10 million dollars . Napoleon in 1802 had sent a 35,000 expeditionary force to reassert control of the valuable and productive French Caribbean Island of Saint-Domingue after a slave revolt, with the intent of subsequent use of the force to take control of the Louisiana Territory. Not all went