Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

The yearly emigration numbers tell only part of the story, since the later BNA yearly totals not only declined, but the percentage of Irish in the UK ethnic mix also declined. Big winners in British North America were the early-arriving Protestant Irish who allied with the Anglophile majority and then, much later, the Catholic Irish who, despite the odds, improved their skills and, in declining numbers, their rapport with the Irish Protestant BNA community, blending into the evolving Canadian melting pot. Winners in the United States were not only the earlier arriving Protestant Irish, who joined the westward migration to fertile territory beyond the Appalachian Continental Divide, but also those less skilled Catholic Irish who migrated in overwhelming numbers, survived the prejudice, embraced urbanization, improved their skills, became leaders in labor, entered politics, and developed a nationwide Irish community, capable of providing an important safety-net to the many Irish men and women in the post-bellum phase of American immigration. Of interest to all good Corkonians, William Russell Grace 1832-1904, born in Riverstown Cork, would become New York’s first Irish Catholic Mayor in 1880, and Hugh O’Brien, born 1827 in Cork, would become Boston’s first Irish Catholic Mayor in 1885. Big losers were the often-forgotten Indigenous Peoples of America, who were driven from their lands, and died from imported disease and conflict. Ultimately all those Irish who survived the transatlantic voyage and regained their health were winners, considering the grim alternative at home. Less it seems this presentation of life in the slums of American cities was rosy – it wasn’t Less it seems to the reader that Irish emigrants alone were on the receiving end of bigotry – they were not. As the century progressed members of the Irish community were also guilty of ungracious conduct towards competing groups, including free Blacks at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. A measure of the human condition. All have sinned. Again - Total Emigrants from Britain and Ireland (British Emigration Commissioners) 1815- 60: BNA - 1,196,521 USA – 3,048,206 (Continental Europe excluded) These totals for 1815-60 are consistent with those presented in the Preface of this work, with Ireland supplying over 60% of the UK ethnic mix into BNA, 70% of the UK ethnic mix into the USA, representing 40% of all European immigration into the USA.

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