PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE
"American Gold," Puck , May 24, 1882. ……. In this cartoon, although the Irish American laborers are portrayed with some dignity (although they have exaggerated facial features, they are portrayed as hardworking), the Irish family awaiting the money sent from America is shown to be lazy and drunken - lolling on a hillside among pigs and whiskey bottles. Worse yet, an inset above them shows Irishmen with a cash box for "Agitation and Disturbance" waiting to intercept the American riches. (Bad) Luck of the Irish in Political Cartoons, (Historical Society of Pennsylvania). Prejudice was part of an Irish American Experience which nourished congregation of fellow-Irish men and women into enclaves (often slums), where Irish socio-religious events and practices could be celebrated free from interference. Irish Catholics in the US enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the Catholic Church. Beyond provision of religious and social services, the Church constructed beautiful cathedrals in America’s cities, monuments to the presence, religious freedom and fundamental rights of Irish American Catholics. The Irish revered their heroes, Irish rebels who escaped from Van Diemen’s Land and Catholic clergy who were commonly Irish-born, and they loved the Democratic Party. The 1850s proved a curious period of soul-searching and compromise. The Democratic Party favored individual rights, state sovereignty, and was the Party of the South, while the abolitionist movement dominated in the North. Irish nationalists in the US dallied with thoughts of Irish armed rebellion, while the Catholic Hierarchy opposed violence. The 1860 Census states: “-- the smallest percentage of English and Irish reside in the slave- holding States (N Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, S Carolina) without exception, and the largest in the free States, --”. What became of our escaped Irish political prisoners?
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