When Irish exiles needed a refuge, they swarmed to New York and established a hotbed of anti-British sentiment and activity that fed the flames of Irish freedom. The Great Famine in the 1840s forced millions of Irish out of Ireland, initially flooding the big cities of the east coast of America, especially New York and
“…the general awakening that was taking place in Ireland seemed to make us forget everything else for the time and think only of the fight in prospect.” – Joe McGarrity Joe McGarrity was Éamon de Valera’s right hand man in America and was once described by poet Padraic Colum as “a gallowglass ready to swing
The battle for the hearts and minds of the Boston Irish took a sharp turn in the aftermath of the 1916 Irish Rising. Prior to the 1916 Rising, Boston’s Irish community had maintained some equilibrium between those who favored constitutional methods of Home Rule, and those for physical force and agitation. And within this spectrum were
Ireland and Irish America's leading newspapers told very different stories regarding the 1916 Easter Rising. The differing reactions to the Easter 1916 Rising in Irish America and Ireland can be gauged by the editorials in the two most popular Irish papers in their respective countries.