empowering opportunity, and communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications along with these companies supports american history tv on c-span-3 as a public service. >> westfield state professor university emerita catherine shannon discusses the large-scale immigration -- irish immigration to america. the nantucket historical association hosted this. prof. shannon: it is great to be in nantucket. i first came here when i was five years old with my mother and my aunt and they decided i should learn how to ride a bike. they crossed the street to young's bike shot and got a bike

for me and i learned how to ride the bike and i was happy to see young's bike shop is still in business. i will not take a spin on this visit. it is great to be back and seeing that nantucket and its people are prospering. my talk tonight irish immigration and the greater island, i am going to focus on three interrelated themes. i will consider the patents of irish immigration to the united states, the push and pull factors that compelled it in the major focus of the influx that began as a result of the great irish famine and continued on it steadily until the early 20th century. there will be a boston, massachusetts slant to all aspects of my commentary tonight.

secondly, i will describe the welcome they received on the shores and how their experiences of immigration and hostility helped to shape strong bonds and communal solidarity creating an irish american identity. this was a consciousness that professed oil t to the united states as well as devotion to the motherland. -- professed loyalty to the united states as well as devotion to the motherland. it was said quote to the irishman, american citizenship is a marriage. he loves the land with his adoption with the ardor of his race. he also loves the tender parent of the bosom which he first

nestled and he learned to pray and guided his uncertain theme when first his life began. we are irish-americans, true to the old and true to the new." the third theme i will address this evening is on the way that these sentiments of irish americans involved many of them in their ancestral land's search for economic justice and independence from the 19th century in recent decades up to the recent belfast agreement of 1998. it is important to recognize that the first significant influx of irish immigrants to north america consisted primarily of 200,000 presbyterians and that began in the early 18th century.

about 10%, or 20,000, arrived in boston between 1715 and 1850. internal factors as well as external factors explained this migration. many were escaping the discrimination that the penal laws had imposed on protestants as well as roman catholics. protestant dissenters were people who were not subscribers to the anglican church, the state church. they would have been mostly people with scotch background who had immigrated over to northern ireland. they had a kind of two-stage immigration, scotland to northern ireland and then eventually to america. these presbyterians were fleeing the effects of poor harvests, droughts, and escalating rents

in the second decade of the 18th century. presbyterian clergymen were prominent in leading, owing to their own poor economic situation as well as the lack of standing to officiate at weddings, funerals, or hold any civil office as a consequential of the test acts of 1704. external forces or pull factors pulled in in 1750, with the sea captains in the new england area who had traveled to the new england area reported that massachusetts officials were willing to provide free land grants to settlers near their borders in hopes of strengthening the defenses against attacks by native americans. by 1720, approximately 2000 immigrants had arrived in boston and hundreds more would come over the next two and a half

decades. they did not receive a very cordial welcome, as the puritan populist believed all irish work "unclean, unwholesome, and disgusting papists." most of these left boston to settle in northern central and western new england, where it names like belfast, dublin and londonderry in new hampshire reflect the origins of their founders. one who remained with his congregants was the reverend john way hand who go to church -- moyhand who built a church where the event that explained the street name changing to federal street took place.

i am sure many of you know where it federal street is in a boston. another development that came at this time in 1737 was the foundation of the charitable irish society of boston by a group of 26 immigrants who wanted to make sure their friends and family arriving would be taken care of and they engaged in philanthropic work to help them get settled if they fell on hard times to help them out. that society is still in existence and continues to do work in helping immigrants arrived to this very day. here we have an artistic representation of the front just

peace of the constitution when the society was incorporated in the early part of the 19th century. in the 1730's, small but regular immigration of the eastern and southern province of ireland began. this included middle ranked individuals rather than the family oriented exodus from ulster. one of the notable immigrants from this time and area was patrick tracy, who became famous sea captain and a very successful private captain in the course of his maritime life. he fathered nine children who had the wisdom to marry into wealthy families, the lowell's, lodges, cabinets, -- cavetts.

the american revolution temporarily halted the flow of ulster immigration to america and it picked up again after 1783, with most going further south to philadelphia and the carolinas. napoleonic wars from 1800 to 1815 reduced the incentive for immigration among the agricultural classes of monster. -- of munster. the demand for agricultural products dropped in wages declined. the spreading cultivation of the potato for the major food source postpone massive outflows of immigrants until the 1840's. the potato was the principal

food source for one third of the irish population, or about 3 million people. 10 to 14 pounds of potato per day plus a cup of two or buttermilk supplied all the nutritional needs for an average laborer. it was noted by many europeans that irish laboring men were the tallest and most fit of any of their brothers in europe. the precarious nature of the potato culture became apparent when a fungus with no known antidote struck in september of 1845 and returned again with varying degrees of severity right on to 1851. these failures produced a

demographic calamity of immense scale, reducing the population from 8.5 million to 6.5 million in just one decade. by february of 1847, a panic driven exodus began to the united states and canada, and it consisted mostly of small tenant farmers who had lost everything as a result of the successive crop failures. almost a million and a quarter of this population loss came from immigration while the remainder was the result of starvation and diseases like cholera and dysentery which spread throughout the country because of malnutrition in the crowding of people into the workhouses soup kitchen

distribution centers as well as at some of the sites where the public works programs were taking place. in this slide you can see the huge increase in the numbers of immigrants coming to the united states in the middle of the 1840's and lasting down through the first part of the 1850's. of course, spiking and going up again but never to the extent of the late 1840's and 1850's. there had been a gradual rise of immigration to america from about 2000 year in 1800 to 50,000 in 1844. on the eve of the famine, boston was receiving about 2000 to 4000 annually and there were about

8000 irish born residents in the city by 1845. this was a male-dominated group and many of them were semiskilled or lower middle class tradespeople rather than simple laborers. among those who came in the pre-famine period of the 1820's and 1830's and became quite successful was andrew carney, later the founder of carney hospital, one of the first hospitals set up in boston and the founding benefactor of boston college high school and later boston college, now boston college university. also in this group was bernard fitzpatrick, who was the father of the future bishop john fitzpatrick, who became an important person in raising relief funds for ireland in

1847. in this group of pre-famine immigrants was patrick donna who, -- donahoe, a very successful banker in boston. it is noteworthy that these early immigrants responded rapidly and generously by organizing fundraising campaigns to help feed the starving irish in their homeland when news of the severity of the second failure of the potato crop in late 1846 arrived in boston. here we have a slide that shows you the degrees of poverty in ireland with most of their cases being in the western and southern sections of the country . these would be the areas that would be very vulnerable to the loss of the potato since these of the people most dependent on

it for their food. bishop fitzpatrick -- here you see a graph indicating the scale of the loss of the potato crop in the 1845, 1846, 1847, and you see it never went back to the levels of the pre-famine period. the dietary practices of the irish had to change a little bit after this, although potatoes, as any of you have visited in ireland are so very, very popular. bishop fitzpatrick, andrew carney, and patrick donahue were prominent in these boston efforts while in new york bishop

john "dagger" spearheaded fundraising to help send relief to ireland. american quakers were also very prominent in this belief efforts and its citizens of nantucket contributed $2000 to the new england relief committee in the early -- in early 1840 seven, despite the fact that nantucket had suffered a horrendous loss -- in early 1847, despite the fact that nantucket had suffered a horrendous loss in a fire and they sent money to ireland. over the course of 1847 between the two major fundraising campaigns that went on, one by bishop fitzpatrick and another by yankee businessmen,

coordinated a shipment of supplies by robert forbes, the total amount of their food resources is something in the neighborhood of $181,000. you would have to multiply that by about eight to get with the equivalent would be today. it was a substantial amount of money for people to give at that time. this slide shows you again how important the food crisis was in ireland, because the exports of grain from ireland kind of come into balance with the imports with imports rising so much in 1846, 1847, and 1848. much of this would have been relief food sent, not just from

the united states but from throughout the world. in early 18 --this was another thing that was important the sending of the news of what was happening in ireland. this was a british royal ship that would bring the newspapers from england and ireland over to boston. it was as a result of the hibernia arriving in boston that people begin to understand the severity of what was happening in ireland. also in that year, the illustrated london news took on the role that 60 minutes and frontline report is today. they sent journalists and graphic artists to ireland to

investigate the veracity of reports of massive, massive loss-of-life in the southern part of the country from starvation and diseases. the reporters found the conditions there were worse than they had anticipated. james manny, who was the lead graphic artist of the iln come over the course of 1847 and the next years published in that magazine a number of illustrations that give us a partial insights into the horror that involved ireland -- that engulfed ireland during this time. i will show you some of the images.

these images were going to be extremely important in terms of creating the worldwide efforts to send relief to ireland that involved people in india, turkey the indians in oklahoma who heard about the starving irish and related their own experiences to that as well. a very fine book was written in which it traces the worldwide campaign to send relief to ireland in 1847, which was the very first of the many global relief and philanthropic campaigns that have happened in the last couple of centuries. you see here two children scratching in a field looking for perhaps a few potatoes that

weren't diseased or the stuffed heads of cabbages to get something to eat. in january of 1847, she is not begging for money to feed her child, she is begging for money to give her child a proper burial. this is a very powerful image. here we have a picture where there is the beginning of a funeral procession and it is sparsely attended which is very different from the usual iris -- irish rituals of a funeral. they are very important in their life. you have to have a grand funeral when you are going out and if you don't have it, it is a

disappointment. this says something about the terrible devastation to the spirit and the morale of the irish people that so few people would go to these funerals, probably because they didn't have the strength to go. by this time many would have pond there -- pawned their clothing so they wouldn't feel respectable to go to a funeral. this is another illustration of dead people being carted off to a common grave. you can see that the three men on the left don't look particularly concerned about the death that surrounds them. you see the horse is even emaciated because with the loss of the potato and the fact that people had to use whatever grain they had to feed themselves as

opposed to the horses, the animals suffered greatly during famine as well. this particular image was published in a new york newspaper and later in february of 1847 and was very important in stimulating a good deal of interest in the community to get involved in relief for ireland. since the illustrated news went globally, it also helped to recruit the and support from other plaisance -- from other places, london as well. a good deal of money was sent to ireland with queen victoria contributing i think about $2000 -- or 2000 pounds to that. it wasn't very much in

consideration of her great wealth and that is why in irish history she is known as the famine queen. some of you may have seen the episode on television recently where it looks like she is very upset but that is a bit of an exaggeration. another thing that happened in these years was widespread eviction of the poorest of the tenants, the laborers. the landlords wanted to evict them because they were responsible for paying the rates that would provide space in the workhouses and some food for those who had no other resources. and also the landlords wanted to rationalize the agricultural organization of their estates and make them more profitable. so they engaged in wholesale

eviction of the most vulnerable tenants, those who have fallen behind in rent. this was a sketch that was done by james mahoney when he returned to ireland to county clare in 1849, where the entire village was cleared. they would dear roof the houses -- de-roof the houses so that they could not go back to them and in some cases would pull them down entirely. this was important in terms of keeping that flow of people going to the united states. the actual police records at the time indicated that 250,000 people were permanently evicted from their dwellings between

1849 and 1854, owing to land consolidation schemes. there isn't time for me to comment extensively -- one more of these illustrations. this was 1849 in county clare, the widow o'donnell -- she was the first person sketched about whom the news published biographical information. she had had a husband and three other children -- three older children died. she lost her baby just after birth. her husband died, and she was still evicted by the landlord. when she was interviewed she was living on the side of the road with her surviving children. this is the kind of scale of

human misery and devastation that was taking place in ireland during these times. as i mentioned, there is no time for me to comment extensively on the role and culpability of the british government for the massive famine mortality. i don't agree with the genocide interpretations that some have put out there. but it is indisputable that anti-irish, anti-catholic bias and prejudice among the british political elite as well as their commitment to laissez-faire economic and demographic theory certainly exacerbated the mortality that took place in ireland during these decades. when christine comes, she will give you the full view, i am sure, of the british

government's responsibility and culpability. it was inadequate and it was heartless. little wonder that immigration surged in these years with 1851 being the exodus when 200,000 irishmen arrived in the united states. those who remained profoundly altered the region, so that by 1855, irish born people comprised 27% of the population and 85% of the foreign-born. with the arrival of 37,000 two boston in the summer of 1847, the sympathy extended early in the year with campaigns to raise

money for food were soon transformed into overt hostility, because thousands of impoverished, malnourished and often overly and often immigrants crammed into the tenements and the sellers adjacent to the works in the north end and the hill area. i have to catch up with the slides here. this fellow who was basically the intellectual architect of the laissez-faire policy of the british government and didn't want any english taxpayers money spent to relieve the irish who they thought were lazy and needed to learn a lesson. the next here we see a map that

shows the areas of the worst population lost during these years. the darkest colors being the areas of heaviest mortality. and here, i think this is important to see. you see the changes in the irish population over the decades to the census and the precipitous decline between 1841 and 1851. it kept continuing to decline right down until 1951. being an outlier in relation to european countries that all experienced increases in population over that time. even when it began to increase again and go up to almost 6.5

million in 2012, that was still less then the population in 1845 and 1951. that shows you the continuing impact of the famine as we move on and irish history. the boston daily transcript warned in june of 1847 what all of this meant for the city of boston and i quote, the tide of immigration that is increasing daily to a most alarming extent, bringing with it poverty, sickness, and crime has excited the attention of the whole community and people in all parts of the country at last have become aroused and are turning about to revise and people that has reached a height that very vitality of our country has been endangered by

it. here we see as in the newspapers -- ads in the newspapers advertising passage to america. you see a typical immigrant in his patched and ragged clothing checking those out as he considers going to america. and here the scene at the docks where immigrants were leaving from. i think you can't make out from the slide that one of the destinations is boston and the other is quebec. you can see that from the distance. the anxieties about the influx of these huge numbers of immigrants led to stricter

entrance requirements and even deportation of some sick and poor famine refugees who were sent back to irish ports and often to liverpool from whence they had come. these fears were also a factor in the anti-catholic, anti-irish, no nothing party in massachusetts and wrote the country, particularly in massachusetts state elections in 1853. they captured all but six seats in the massachusetts legislature at that time. despite such hostility, the tide of irish immigration could not be reversed. the famine had turned immigration into a national phenomena that affected every class and region in ireland, so that virtually every family there, as the saying went, one leg across the atlantic.

the famine exodus created a patent of chain migration that lasted into the early 20th century, never as high as in the late 1840's and early 1850's, but spiking when serious conditions happen in ireland again, in 1860's and at the end of the 1870's. even government officials realized that chain migration was something that was started as a result of the famine. as early as 1849, the immigration commission in ireland made the following observations. he observed immigration begets immigration, almost the whole of irish immigration last year, certainly more than three quarters of it, was paid for by the money sent home from america.

in 1850, remittances from america to find passes for relatives or to help sustain those who remain back at home amounted to one million pounds annually. again, multiply that by about eight to get the contemporary value. for the rest of the century, the american letter became an interval part of household budgeting for families throughout ireland. in the latter half of the century, the numbers of irish immigrants in the united states fluctuated due to prevailing economic conditions in ireland's and prospects for employment in the rapidly industrializing united states. reasons for immigration were based on very careful calculation of the economic benefits rather than the panic driven exodus of the late 1840's. irish immigrant numbers fell to about 50,000 per year in the

early 1860's, then rose again to almost 100,000 in the middle of the last couple of years of the 1860's when there was another minor tater crop failure and a recession. the return of near famine conditions in the west of ireland in 1879 through 1881 sparked another rise and that is the other big hump in the graph that you see on the screen. in 1880, approximately 75,000 across the atlantic, with 9000 arriving in the port of boston. also by the 1880's, the chain migration factor coupled with cheaper and faster passages and steam powered ships made the journey more palatable to prospective immigrants. instead of the month-long journey that was the usual in the famine era. additionally, the

reconfiguration of irish landholding patents after the famine limited land inheritance to one son, so that america provided the best option for non-inheriting young irish men and women with ambitions for steady employment and suitable marriage prospects. economic considerations also meant that now only one daughter would be given the dowry and her sisters would have to leave and fend for themselves. one significant development at this time in the last quarter of the century was that single women now represented over half of the irish immigrants arriving in the country. the educational curriculum of domestic skills that were taught to these young girls in the national schools prepare them to enter domestic service directly upon their arrival in american cities. in 1850, the boston pilot reported that 2277 irish girls

were working as domestics in boston. by 1880, that had grown to 7 172. all those -- although these required hard work, it gave them the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. these women were the primary funders of chain migration in the american letters sent back to families in ireland. they were also very important supporters of the various political campaigns that i will talk about in a few minutes. meanwhile, irish male immigrants managed to obtain employment in boston and nearby industrial cities, relegated to low wage, dangerous, unskilled jobs of cleaning stables, hauling cargo, digging ditches and canals that

eventually created the back bay of the boston. as a result, the average irish male immigrant lived only 14 years after arrival in boston, causing one to observe that he never saw a gray-haired irishman. professor joe lee from nyu university has calculated that between 1847 and 1853, 200,000 immigrants had died within three years of their arrival. that is a very high mortality rate. after 1852, here is bishop fitzpatrick. i have is out of sequence he helped to raise so much money and that is the cathedral of the holy cross, the first one in boston built in the early 19th century.

fitzpatrick was very important in helping famine relief. here you see the areas of boston where the irish settled, down in the wharf areas, here down in the south end. up here along what would be atlantic avenue. and they lived in very crowded sellers with sometimes 20 people in one room. as a consequence of this, disease spread very quickly. a massive outbreak of cholera happened after this huge influx. this isn't terribly clear, but you see these black marks along here, these all represent the

areas where the public health authorities had determined that cholera outbreaks had happened. it corresponds with the previous map, as you can see. after 1882, the number of irish immigrants was generally well below 50,000 a year, due to improved economic conditions in ireland brought by british land reforms that allowed irish tenants to buy holdings, coupled with the fact that most who wanted to go had already left. irish nationalists politicians and clergy leaders were ambivalent about encouraging further immigration, because they believed it was robbing the country of their best and brightest and they wanted those people to be staying in ireland to go with the church's mission

and also the political mission of ireland's struggle to obtain self-government. even in boston, some of the leaders of the irish-american community became very vocal in their opposition to government-sponsored immigration and cut down on some government-assisted plans, british government assisted plans to help some of the poorest of the tenants in the west of ireland. let's get to the political aspects of this. how did all of this expect itself politically question -- express itself political and lead to a greater island? the continual arrival of irish immigrants to the country helped to create living links to the homeland and the fact that most settled in closely knit neighborhoods and communal solidarity was very quick to develop.

the roman catholic church with it rituals and support programs for the immigrants edit further to a sense of cohesion and group identity. technological developments, a faster transatlantic travel, instant telegraph connections and the rise of irish ethnic newspapers like the pilot of the irish world, which published latest news from ireland, one day, maybe two days after it happened, or very important factors in creating links and identity across the atlantic. most importantly, for at least three decades after 1850 eight, memories of the famine, -- 1850, memories of those who survive their parents in grandparents and there was support for the irish national movements in the late 1860's and early 1870's to

the land war of 1879 and 1881. the home rule campaigns that went down to 1914 and eventually to the irish war of independence to 1921. the leaders were conscience -- conscious of what it would do to the irish politics. a radical editor of the irish world taunted the british prime minister, william gladstone with this observation, "you are now unlike the past dealing with two ireland's, the greater ireland is on the side of the atlantic. this is the base of operations. we in america furnish the sinews of war. we in america render moral aid. meanwhile, prime minister gladstone's colleague proved prophetic when he observed "

informer rebellions the irish were in ireland we could reach their forces, cut off their reserves and men and money and then to subjugate was comparatively easy. now there is an irish nation in the united states, equally hostile with plenty of money and absolutely beyond our reach, yet within 10 days of our shores." and here isn't illustration from harper's magazine, which shows people in ireland being desperate again in 1879, and this is an american ship coming to render aid at that time. the american invasions conducted by veterans of the civil war in 1867 and 1871 were premature and badly organized. the republican ideology in the

belief that military force was essential to drive britain from ireland persisted for many decades among a small number of the irish-american population. jeremiah o'donovan whose father died of exposure, and who saw his mother and siblings forced into exile in america, was determined to exact revenge on the british and was involved in bombing plots in london in the 1880's. it is significant that at his burial in dublin, this is where patrick pierce made his famous oration in which he said that ireland would not be free until the memory of the dead was respected and honored. this was a kickoff for what would happen a year laser -- later in the rising.

another person was ending up in the united states doing fundraising for -- and was very instrumental in getting guns and ammunition to the rebels in 1916. there was another political tradition among irish americans that proved more lasting, constructive, and that was the tradition of constitutional nationalism as espoused by daniel o'connell in the 1820's through the 1840's in the famine era. it was revised in the 1870's and then in the 1880's. this tradition found irish-american supporters in the

late 1870's partly as a result of the fiascoes in canada and they were using politics effectively in the british parliament to extract concessions. they were people whose work and activity was totally at with what the american conception of irish were. here we have another contemporary cartoon that kind of suggests that all these immigrants are poor and again are going to threaten the stability of the workforce and country here in the united states. this is a sketch that came from the late 1870's and was published in a new york newspaper, basically saying that ireland was sending all of its poor from the poorhouses over to the united states. the hostility against the

immigrants lasted a long time. here is another famous one room that time where irish immigrants would bring rum, romanism, and rebellion. notice the facial features of this immigrant here. that was very common at the time , apelike features, which is very common in the anti-irish representations. the constitutional methods espoused by the leaders in ireland soon began to eclipse support in the united states and basically remained consistent down to the first world war. among the boston people who were

-- here we have michael davitt, leader of the land war. charles parnell, who both received great help in fundraising in their campaign to get people behind constitutional approach to changes in their capacity with meetings at nathaniel hall -- at faneuil hall. anddonhoe as the editor of the pilot. and o'reilly who orchestrated the recovery of prisoners.

he was an incredible man, o'reilly, whose memory should be resurrected and spread. other bostonians who helped in campaigns to raise relief money for the land war were hugh o'brien, the first irish born mayor of boston and a very successful one. he was the person who had the idea of building a public library in boston. and also patrick collins, who became o'reilly's great friend. collins was active in raising money for tenant relief between 1879 and 1880. he later was very important in raising money for parnell's

irish parliamentary party in the 18 months he served as president as the american branch of the irish national league. he became the second irish born mayor of boston later in the century and died in office in 1906, which opened up the door for james michael curley to enter city hall. again, this rise of irish politicians wasn't very popular, and here is another cartoon from 1894 that indicated a lot of i suppose local yankee concern about the irish coming into politics and the standard stereotypes, hear someone with the irish flag, the bishop appear, there is a policeman here somewhere, and hear a

course the statehouse, in the background. collins and o'reilly had started out their political activities as fenians and they decided to give that up and as i say or very important in sponsoring the constitutional approach. i know time is fleeting on and i am going to skip a little bit of this because i know everybody is probably getting hungry and talking about famine tonight, i don't want to cause another one. for parnell' home rule campaign, o'reilly devised a very good tactic and he created a subscription tactic in which they asked for only five dollars

for people to join the irish national league and they got a tremendous amount of money as a result of that. it was a little bit like bernie sanders' idea to get everybody involved taking very small prescriptions. parts of this financial aid was really something that people in irish america became aware of and knew they could have an impact on helping ireland to gain its self-government and force the british to do something. john fitzgerald, the boston friar commissioner and activists said the following during the home rule campaign and i think this is interesting, "the ireland in america is the treasury department of the home rule movement, as of every movement in the direction of national independence. ireland is independent and

prosperous and while mr. parnell and his followers need assistance, it would be forthcoming in the irish parliamentary party will never be empty while there are 10,000 irishmen here to send aid over the water." that was december 14, 1885. as many of you probably know, home rule never did materialize, even though the third bill passed the house of commons. it was suspended because of the opposition of ulster and the outbreak of the first world war, which was a major disappointment for those in the constitutional tradition and it created an opening for people to reassert themselves and it was as a result of that the physical force tradition was able to pull off the 1916 east arising, which in the end was not successful.

the summary executions of 1916 shocked irish america and brought them temporarily back to supporting revolution and violent methods. british attempts to apply conscription to ireland also tended to alienate irish americans and there were a number of protest rallies in boston where some of the most important political leaders attended, james michael curley, the governor, o'connell, all of these held in boston common. many irish americans also financially supported the revolutionary government by bonds for the doyle government, which supported collins' efforts. devolera escaped and visited

and held a rally at fenway park in which 22,000 people showed up to indicate their support for the irish republican approach. at some of you may know that fenway park was actually built by an irishman. if you didn't know, you know now. [laughter] most irish americans were relieved to see the end of violence in july 1921 and accepted the tree of that year despite the continuing practitioner which kept the six counties of ulster in the united kingdom. irish-american involvement in irish politics diminished considerably in the 1920's, owing to disappointment, if not discussed about the outbreak of civil war in 1922.

petition was a secondary issue at that time. it was only in the 1960's that petition began to be a crucial issue for most irish americans. and that was because of the birth of the northern irish civil rights campaign. it was a campaign that was able to expose the gross discrimination in housing and public employment and in politics that the norse catholic minority had faced. this led to a temporary resurgence of the physical force tradition which in america was expressed with support for a group called the northern ireland aid group and some of you may have heard of that group

. eventually what happened in about 1971, 1972, is that a lot of irish americans who were very concerned about the grievances of the catholic community were not ready to support violence because of the loss of life and economic devastation that have brought to northernyears. they began to rethink their views about what the nature and because of that conflict was and that it was more complex. one person who helped them, particularly in making the reassessment and showing them the constitutional position or tactics should be used was a member of the social democratic and labor party, john hume who

provided the international -- intellectual analysis and framework that allowed the negotiations to take place in northern ireland from 1996 to 1998 that produced the good friday agreement. of course, he received the nobel prize for his efforts, along with the unionist leader, david trumbull. george mitchell, of course, was very important in the success of those negotiations. american involvement in these years in northern ireland really can be attributed to the efforts of john hume, who as early as the 1970's, came to america to lobby people like ted kennedy, to get them to use their influence so that irish-americans would not give

money to paramilitary groups and would backup the use of dialogue and negotiations as a way forward. as i've indicated, it was this approach that finally brought an end to the devastation in northern ireland that had taken the lives of 3600 people and created severe injuries for about 36,000 others. tip o'neill got some of his other colleagues in congress to help him. senator kenny, senator moynahan, and the governor of new york. these were known as the four horsemen. they put a lot of pressure on the white house over the years, particularly on ronald reagan, to have him pressure miss thatcher to give up her hostile approach to northern ireland. it was one that said they are

all rebels, all troublemakers, let the police and army deal with it. eventually, she had to change that. they were also successful in getting president carter to promise significant aid to northern ireland if these could be developed -- peace could be developed. after the anglo-irish agreement in 1985, a farewell gift, the international fund for ireland, was established, which has been crucially important in providing for economic development in northern ireland. it is still part of the federal budget today. what also was important is it led to other countries contributing to an international fund. canada, australia, new zealand. so there are many resources with

economic development, particularly helping deprived areas of northern ireland. bill clinton's involvement was very important in the 1990's. he began it as a kind of election tactic and strategy, a smart one. but he got emotionally invested in it. within a year or so of taking office, it was eventually his government that loud -- that allowed gerry adams to come to the united states with a visa. adams was told you guys have got to come into a constitutional process, because otherwise, we are not going to have anything to do with you. that was a very important visit. adams was able to bring the rest of his people along to the idea that a cease-fire was necessary. and very important.

so i think that the involvement of the american political establishment in bringing negotiations to northern ireland, eventually leading to the agreement of 1998, is one aspect of american foreign policy we can be proud of. in addition to that, in conclusion, it is very important to recognize other people who contributed to the peace process in northern ireland. many individuals, who took their own efforts, time, money, and resources, and did what they could to support people like hume, discussions with people in the ira waiting to tell them, look, you are damaging the country. this is the wrong tactic. it's got them to think about negotiations. john collen, a very successful software engineer, was very important in these efforts. also, you had universities

taking important roles in educating their students about the nature and causes of the conflict, and also being engaged in training irish politicians, north and south, as to how they should take up negotiations. boston college was a very important leader in that. then, you have important groups like the ireland fund, and those of you here in nantucket know about the ireland fund. i think they just had a big annual summer fundraiser here last week. they have been very important in underpinning peace and development with their work as well. irish-american partnership does a similar work but on a smaller scale. at present, the peace process is in a frozen state, because the administration is in suspension, but irish america still has a

role to play. american investors can still contribute, very positively, by continuing investment and encouraging the development of negotiations to get the government in the north back up and running. it is especially important within the shadow of brexit -- with the shadow of brexit looming overhead. if that turns out to be a hard brexit, that will be very bad for the peace process in northern ireland and destabilize a lot of the progress that has been made. i think i have gone on too long except to say, if corporation continues, i think the time will come that hume's vision of an agreed island work catholics, protestants, and others can live in common and engage in mutual respect, that will be realized.

thank you very much. [applause] ♪ >> tonight on lectures in history, christopher newport university professor jonathan white teaches the class about the 1864 presidential election. here's a preview. >> the republicans are very critical of the rebellion, right? they have like to say -- a lot

to say about the people of civil war. what do the democrats have to say about the rebellion? >> like eli said in the third resolution, it talks about a shameful violation of the constitution, and they talk about holding a revolutionary resistance power that lincoln is using. >> yeah. they are more upset with lincoln, and political opposition, so they won't praise lincoln, which is understandable. notice they have harsher wars for lincoln, much harsher words, and -- words for lincoln, much harsher words and nothing criticizing the confederacy. i don't see any criticism of the confederacy up in arms. i see an olive branch appeal, let's get together and have a convention of the state and negotiate peace and bring you back in the union. but the democrats don't understand the confederates are not going to compromise.

they do not want to compromise or come back into the union. they want to be their own pro-slavery republic. so i think there's a naivety on the part of the democrats here and a sense that they see a connection between themselves and the confederates, whereas the republicans see the confederates as the enemy. to the points jeremiah and kim pointed out that this secession in revolution. when they talk about revolution here, they are saying, if lincoln keeps violating our rights, we have a right to revolution, we have a right to overthrow lincoln's administration. because the democrats had nothing bad to say about the confederates, rumors started spreading in the newspapers that the confederates had written this platform for them, and in fact, the new york times said the convention was made up entirely of "black carted

traders." so this treason issue will be central to this election. >> learn more about the 1864 presidential election, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, 5:00 pacific on american history tv. >> former vice president walter mondale died on april 19 at the age of 93. next, from 2015, a conversation between walter mondale and former president jimmy carter, who served together in the white house from 1977 to 1981. this program was part of a tribute to mondale, hosted by the university middle school -- university minnesota school humphrey school of public affairs at the university of minnesota hosted for this event recorded in washington. mo