Hayden's History Hour Ep. 3: How Mass Irish Immigration Changed American Politics Forever

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Hayden's History Hour Ep. 3: How Mass Irish Immigration Changed American Politics Forever

Federalist Radio Hour | Hosted by: Hayden Daniel | Aired: March 17, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this St. Patrick’s Day special, host Hayden Daniel delves into the sweeping effects of Irish immigration to America, focusing especially on the 19th century wave that permanently changed both the demographics and the political landscape of the United States. Framed around the provocative question, "Did the Irish ruin America?", the episode examines Irish assimilation, the rise of political machines, American nativism, sectarian conflict, and how legacies of this era endure in modern politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Ireland’s Tumultuous History with England (00:48–11:35)

• Background of English domination in Ireland:

  • English conquest began in 1169, exploiting the fractured Irish political system.
  • By 1603, the whole island came under English control, often through plantations—land confiscation and settlement by English/Scottish Protestants.
  • The creation of "Scots-Irish" (Ulster Scots): Protestant settlers in Northern Ireland, many of whom would later emigrate to America.

• Two main Irish groups by the 17th–18th centuries:

  • Catholic, Gaelic-speaking "natives"—generally hostile to England.
  • Protestant settlers/descendants—aligned with English rule.

• Early Irish migration to America:

  • Before 1845, most Irish immigrants to America were Protestant.
  • “By 1790, the United States only has around 20,000 Catholics in a nation of 2 million people.” (09:49)

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2. The Irish Potato Famine and the Flood of Immigration (11:35–22:52)

• Potato Famine (1845–1855):

  • Catastrophic, with approximately 1 million dead and up to 2 million fleeing Ireland; nearly half the island’s population lost.
  • “Ireland loses almost half its population, 3 million out of 8 million people... absolutely devastating for Ireland socially, culturally, and economically.” (11:50)

• Causes for the devastating impact:

  • Absentee landlordism (British landlords disinvested in tenant welfare).
  • Near-total dependence on potatoes: “Several scholars have estimated that the average adult male Irish worker ate 14 pounds of potatoes a day.” (13:04)

• British government response: Largely ineffective or laissez-faire, especially under the Whigs.

• Scale of immigration:

  • 1–1.5 million Irish came to America during the famine years.
  • By 1855, “In New York City, about a quarter of all residents were Irish immigrants.” (17:41)
  • Boston saw 37,000 Irish arrive by 1855, in a city of just 100,000.

• Cultural and religious “otherness”:

  • Marked by Catholicism, language (Gaelic and thick accents), and foreign customs.
  • “The Irish represent the first truly alien minority group within the United States, at least from the Americans who were seeing it happen perspective.” (17:57)

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3. Anti-Irish Sentiment and Political Backlash (22:52–35:39)

• Protestant America’s fear of Catholicism:

  • “98 to 99% Protestant in 1790... religion and religious attitudes were far more important to American society than they are today.” (20:17)
  • Catholic immigrants viewed with suspicion—seen as loyal to the pope, not democracy.

• Nativist group formation:

  • Tammany Hall’s transformation: Initially nativist, switched to courting Irish voters as a new power base. Began “the first true community organizers in America,” building a machine based on jobs, patronage, and favors. (23:51)
  • “Tammany evolves into one of the first true community organizers in America and establishes a vast and powerful network of patronage, graft, and get-out-the-vote operations...” (23:58–24:07)

• Rise and infamy of Boss Tweed:

  • Absorbs and empowers Irish political participation.
  • Embezzled an estimated $5 billion in modern dollars via “honest graft” and corruption.
  • “His ring of embezzlement, also known as the Tweed ring, embezzled around $13 million. That’s $178 million in today’s money.” (27:58)

• Mass discrimination and violence:

  • Irish immigrants became scapegoats for crime, poverty, and job competition.
  • “Cartoonists like Thomas Nast very famously depicted Irishmen as violent drunkards hell-bent on barbarism and destruction.” (33:37)

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4. The Know Nothings, Sectarian Violence, and Irish Political Power (35:39–47:14)

• Know Nothing Party:

  • Emerged in 1850s, explicitly anti-Irish/Catholic.
  • “The Know Nothing party’s platform: slavery isn’t that important... the big question is whether we’re going to let in more immigrants and whether immigrants should rule America or the native population should.” (36:37–36:56)
  • Briefly powerful: 52 House seats in 1854, nearly became the #2 party.
  • Lost steam after 1856 election; anti-immigrant sentiment “almost became a major national movement.”

• Sectarian and ethnic strife imported into America:

  • Irish brought animosity towards English, and intra-Irish Protestant/Catholic conflicts.
  • Orange Riots (1870–71): Violent clashes between Protestant and Catholic Irish in NYC. “Dozens of people were killed in these riots.” (44:05)

• Fenian Brotherhood and the “imported troubles”:

  • 1858: Irish-American group launches raids from US soil into British Canada, hoping to force English withdrawal from Ireland.
  • “It just shows that Irish immigrants... were willing to violently act out those feuds.” (47:23)
  • Unintended consequence: spurred Canadian confederation.

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5. The Legacy of Irish Immigration and Political Machines (47:14–end)

• Spread of the Tammany Model:

  • Political machines based on patronage, jobs, and ethnic solidarity arose in other cities—Boston, Chicago, etc.
  • “In some ways, the New Deal nationalized Tammany’s tactics...” (48:12)
  • Patronage, group identity politics, and “honest graft” endure in American politics, particularly in urban Democratic strongholds.

• Long-term assimilation and shifting scapegoats:

  • Four and a half million Irish arrived 1820–1930; assimilation slow.
  • Irish scapegoated through Prohibition era, then faded as later immigrant groups arrived.
  • “I think it really disappears with the election of Kennedy in 1960. That’s sort of like the final death knell of Irishmen as non-Americans.” (52:00)

• Who is to blame for America’s corrupt politics?

  • Thought-provoking final question:

  “So do we blame the politicians who pander to and use the Irish to build their sort of empires of corruption? ... Or is it the individuals within that group, or is it being the people who take advantage of that group who are truly to blame for what we—the situation that we’ve found ourselves in?” (54:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of the Irish Famine:

  • “Ireland loses almost half its population, 3 million out of 8 million people. This is, as you might expect, absolutely devastating for Ireland socially, culturally and economically.” (11:51)

• On Tammany Hall’s innovation:

  • “Tammany evolves into one of the first true community organizers in America and establishes a vast and powerful network of patronage, graft, and get out the vote operations that allowed it to completely dominate the politics of New York City for decades and decades.” (23:58)

• On anti-Irish bigotry:

  • “Cartoonists like Thomas Nast very famously depicted Irishmen as violent drunkards hell bent on barbarism and destruction.” (33:37)

• On lasting legacy:

  • “We still see that basic strategy of Tammany at play today in Democrat politics. Pander to certain subsections of the population, including foreign minorities, and build up a giant network of aid and patronage to those voters.” (48:24)

• Key closing reflection:

  • “So I ask that you decide who’s to blame. Is it the group, or is it the individuals within that group, or is it being the people who take advantage of that group who are truly to blame for what... the situation that we’ve found ourselves in?” (54:02)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:48 – Episode opens, Irish in America: pride and scapegoat
• 03:00–10:00 – English conquest, plantations, rise of Protestant “Scots-Irish”
• 11:35 – Irish Potato Famine, mass exodus, devastation detailed
• 17:41 – Irish dominate New York, Boston demographics
• 19:50–22:21 – Origins of anti-Catholic sentiment, Protestant dominance
• 23:51–29:00 – Tammany Hall, political machines, Boss Tweed corruption
• 33:37 – Anti-Irish caricatures & job competition
• 35:39–44:05 – Know Nothings rise and fall, major nativist moment
• 44:05 – Orange riots, intra-Irish conflicts in America
• 47:14 – Fenian raids, impact on Canada
• 48:00–51:00 – Declining anti-Irish sentiment, path to assimilation
• 54:02 – Reflective closing: who is to blame for importation of group politics and corruption?

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Tone & Style

• Hayden Daniel’s tone is historically analytic, wry, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek, especially with rhetorical flourishes (e.g., “Did the Irish ruin America?”).
• The discussion is rich in historical detail, often comparing past and present, and encourages critical thought about group identity and political dynamics.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode provides a deep dive into how mass Irish immigration re-wrote America's political playbook—whether through the rise of urban political machines, embattled struggle for Catholic acceptance, or the importation of Old World resentments to American streets. The discussion thoughtfully illuminates the roots (and persistence) of ethnic bloc politics, patronage, and nativism in American political culture—with the Irish immigrant saga as both template and cautionary tale.

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Transcript

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[Hayden Daniel]

Greetings and welcome back to another edition of Hayden's History Hour. I'm your host, Hayden Daniel, an editor at the Federalist. As always, you can email the [e-mail] for follow us on xderalistfdrlst. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Today we have a very special episode for St. Patrick's Day, and we're going to explore the burning question that's on everybody's mind. Did the Irish ruin America? Now, tens of millions of Americans, estimated up to 30 million Americans, can claim some sort of Irish ancestry, and that's a point of pride for many of them. As we've seen, with the amount of celebration that goes on for St Patrick's Day and today, most people would say that the Irish Americans are solidly American in both culture and temperament. They are just as American as the people who were here during the Revolution or earlier in the 19th century. But that wasn't always the case. Americans who saw Irish immigrants coming over the Atlantic in the mid 19th century certainly did not think so. They saw the Irish Catholics coming off the boats as invaders who brought a foreign culture, an alien religion, crime and corruption to their young republic. That being said, as you might expect, the Irish faced a lot of hostility when they first came to America. And their arrival and how they began to assimilate into America changed the very nature of American politics in foundational ways that we still feel today. But before we dive into the history of Irish immigration to America, we need to do just a real quick rundown of Ireland's history and its relationship with England before colonization. The English conquest of Ireland began in 1169 during the reign of Henry II, the king of England at the time. Ireland at that point was not a unified country. It was a very fractured island full of small, petty kingdoms. It was not a unified country at all. And this gave the English, which for a medieval kingdom was relatively centralized in the in the 12th century, the advantage in Conquering large parts of Ireland. And they managed to capture large swaths of territory one by one over decades. So they end up controlling roughly half the island by the middle of the third of the 14th century. But their control begins to wane after that, mostly because of. Because of distractions from the Hundred Years War with France. That takes away most of Britain or England's attention. And then after that, you have political instability with things like the War of the roses in the 15th century really prevents England from concentrating on Ireland. And native Irish are able to sort of reclaim large parts of their territory. But the English begin to re establish control over the island during. Under the Tudor dynasty, Most notably with Henry viii. Henry is made king of Ireland. This is the first person to really claim a kingship over the entire island in 1542, as you might expect, there were many, many rebellions against English rule in Ireland. And there would be from this point on, dozens of rebellions. But the entire island eventually does fall under English control. By 1603, the Tudors also begin what's called the plantation system, which, that might sound familiar, but it's a little bit different from the plantation system that we would think of today that went on in the American south or in the Caribbean with slavery. This is basically just the confiscation of Catholic Irish land and giving it to settlers from Britain and especially nobles from Britain. So the peasants who worked the land would still mostly remain Irish Catholics. It's just their noble. Their noble lord in the feudal system would be. Not really. The feudal system would be English. James I, the first Stuart king who takes over after the Tudors after Elizabeth I dies without a male heir, creates the plantation of Ulster, which is basically what is today Northern Ireland. It's that about northeastern quarter of the country. If you, if you look at a map. It's what's basically what is today Northern Ireland, which had been before this the most Irish and the least controlled by the English of all the Irish provinces. This results in the colonization of Ulster province by mostly Scots and English Protestants. This begins the process of the creation of what is today Northern Ireland. In all around 200,000 Scots alone. This doesn't include English. Move to Ulster, move to that province. And this is where the term Scots Irish comes from. You've probably heard that before. And this is where those people, when someone says, Scott, Cyrus, this is who they're talking about. And we need to make that. That means we need to make a very important distinction here. At this point in history about the early 17th, early 18th century, there are two types of Irishmen. There are the vast majority of Irish at this time who are Catholic and Gaelic speaking, who are very much the quote unquote, natives of the island, and they are deeply hostile to English authority and are the ones launching all the rebellions. And then there are the Protestant Irish who are part of the minority who have been converted to Protestantism or are the descendants of the Protestant settlers from plantation era. So they're the Scots and English who've been brought over specifically to sort of plant a protest, a loyal Protestant population within Ireland itself to hopefully this is, this is the English government's hope that that will stamp out rebellions. But many of those Ulster Protestants prefer America over Northern Ireland. And by 1775, about 250,000 Ulster Scots, just Scots, have moved to the American colonies, meaning that Scots Irishmen comprise over 10% of the entire population of what will become the United States, or what was the United States in 1790. 10%, quite big. They mostly moved to the frontier. Appalachia, Kentucky, Tennessee, those places. Scott's Irish immigration to the United States remains relatively high after the Revolution all the way up to the end of the 19th century. At this point, virtually all Irish immigration to America is Protestant, and it's those Scots Irishmen. The United States only has around 20,000 Catholics in a nation of 2 million people in 1790. And immigration to America in general was relatively low for the first 30 years of the Republic. And this is something that schools don't often teach you, and people really don't realize that for the first 30 some odd years of America's existence, immigration was very, very low. Only about 500,000 people come to America. From 1790 to 1820, that averages about 16,000 people a year. And in a nation that starts out at 2 million, that's relatively, relatively low. Before the Irish, the vast majority of immigration to the United States was from England, Scotland, and those Scots Irish from Northern Ireland. These immigrants were virtually all Protestant and virtually all English speaking. The next largest group were the Germans who came over to states like Pennsylvania. It's where the Pennsylvania Dutch comes from. They're not actually Dutch, they're Germans who came during the colonial period. And you also have the leftovers of the Dutch colonization of New York. They're another semi substantial minority in America, but they're, they're tiny in comparison. And the majority of those immigrants coming over in those first 30 years are also Protestant. Immigration doesn't start to ramp up until about 1830. The country's population is 13 million in 1830. And before that, as you might expect, almost all population growth was from internal increase. So it's just people having kids and growing naturally without a whole lot of immigration. But that all changes after it begins to grow through the 1830s. That all changes in 1845.

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[Hayden Daniel]

This is a part of the story you're probably familiar with. The Irish potato famine hits the island of Ireland in 1845 and it is absolutely devastating for the seven years that it ravages that island and it fundamentally transforms Irish society. One million people are estimated to have died from it, out of a total population of around 8 million people. And an additional, and estimates vary on this, between 1 and a half and 2 million people leave the country between 1845 and 1855. So in a 10 year time span, Ireland loses almost half its population, 3 million out of 8 million people. This is, as you might expect, absolutely devastating for Ireland socially, culturally and economically. But another facet of it that people may not know is that specific potato blight hit all of Europe, not just Ireland, and caused about 100,000 deaths in other parts of the continent as well. Now, why did it affect Ireland so much and not the rest of Europe as hard? The two main reasons are absentee landlordism that arose from the plantation system, which meant that landlords were often back in England and not particularly responsive to the immediate needs of their tenants and really didn't care as long as their rent got paid. And the near total dependence on potatoes as a staple crop. And when I was reading into, into how dependent the Irish were on potatoes, I was a little shocked. I didn't really believe some of the numbers that I was seeing. Several scholars have estimated that the average adult male Irish worker ate 14 pounds of potatoes a day. 14 pounds of potatoes a day. That's. That's a lot of potatoes. And that's basically all that they're eating is. It is not just a staple crop for the Irish, it is the only crop that they eat, basically. So when there's a big blight, suddenly there, there is literally no food. And. And they paid quite dearly for that sort of monoculture that had had sprung up because of that dependence. Now, the English government at the time was run by the Tories and they made a few limited attempts to send aid, but it was pretty half hearted. And when the Whig government took control in mid-1846, they immediately adopted a laissez faire attitude toward the whole thing. Said the free market will figure it out. We have no obligation to help them at all. And that just makes it worse. So the Irish people are faced with a difficult choice. Do they stay and try to eke out a meager living in Ireland, or do they try to go somewhere else where they can feed themselves? And quite a few Irishmen decide to leave. As previously noted, this Irish wave of immigrants that begins in late 1845, early 1846, and continues through 1855, that 10 year span really is sort of the biggest wave of Irish immigration to the United States. And it coincides with a wave of German immigration in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848. That's when all across Europe there were liberal revolutions against autocracy and monarchy. Almost all of them fail. And in the German states. Germany is not a unified country at this time. It's broken into dozens and dozens of small states. The repression after those revolutions fail is particularly hard in Germany. And many German liberals decide to leave and come to America. And they do. Most of the German immigrants are Protestant, but there is a sizable percentage of Catholics among them because many people from southern Germany, which is predominantly Catholic, also decided to leave. The 1840s sees a total of 1.7 million people immigrate to America, mostly from Ireland and Germany. As previously noted, 300,000 people came in 1849 alone. Remember, I did note that in the first 30 years of America, 500,000 people came in 30 years, whereas 300,000 come in a single year. So this is a massive increase in immigration. Just to illustrate that further, the level of immigration in the 1840s was 12 times that of the 1820s. 12 times in a 20 year span. Between 1 million and 1.5 Irish come to America during the famine years from 1845 to 1855. Again, many others go to Canada and a few go to other British colonies. But the vast majority of Irish who leave Ireland come to America. Relatively obvious reasons. They don't really want to go anywhere else controlled by the English after their response to the potato famine. By 1850, with the first few years of the immigration wave completed, the US population is 23 million people. In New York City, about a quarter of all residents were Irish immigrants by 1855. A quarter of the city is Irish and immigrant. They have a population of around 650,000. In Boston, a city that had 100,000 residents, saw an influx of 37,000 Irishmen by the end of famine, by 1855 or 1852. Sorry. The Irish represent the first truly alien minority group within the United States, at least from the Americans who were seeing it happen perspective, many of these Irishmen did not speak English. Again, they spoke Gaelic, or if they did, it was heavily accented English with that Irish brogue that's become very famous. But it was probably far thicker in the 19th century. But it's really their Catholicism that marks them as culturally distinct from Americans. And I should really explain that more because today it's not really that big of a deal to most people. But in the 19th century, and especially before the 19th century, it's hard to stress how important the distinction between Protestant and Catholic was to people, especially people in the English world. And I keep bringing that up because American colonists brought over their anti Catholic attitudes from mother country. The English were fanatically anti Catholic in the late 18th and 19th century. There were laws, many laws on the books restricting what Catholics could and could not do in England. As just one example, Catholics were barred from serving in Parliament until 1829. If you were a Catholic, you could not serve on the in in the legislature until 1829. That anti Catholicism was rooted in the English reformation from the 16th century and the English Civil wars of the 17th century, which were bloody and long and societally extremely damaging to English society. That's a whole other very fascinating topic that might be a future episode. But the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in England really engendered this, this fanatical anti Catholic attitude in the English and that carries over with Americans when they come over and colonize the new world. To illustrate that even more, as I previously noted, there are only about 20,000 Catholics in the entire United States. In 1790, yes, Maryland was founded as a quote unquote Catholic colony. But by the revolution only about 1 in 8 Marylanders was still Catholic. Vast majority are Protestant. And America as a whole is 98 to 99% Protestant. In 1790 it is overwhelmingly Protestant Protestant. Now of course, there are dozens of denominations within that 98, 99% Protestantism, but they are Protestant. And by 1840 it's still 95% or higher Protestant. It's somewhat unthinkable today about how monolithic American religious attitudes were. And of course, remember religion and religious attitudes were far more important to American society than they are today. That's what informs people's politics, morals, all of that. It's all, it's basically all Protestant before the Irish come. And between 1830 and 1860, the Catholic population of the country grew around 900%. And it's almost entirely because of Irish immigration. And as you might expect, with a population that has carried over a lot of that anti Catholic sentiment from England and one that's seeing rapid immigration in only a few years. Remember, 300,000 people came in only a year in 1849, you might expect some nativist and anti immigration groups to start forming. And they did. But also some people start to see the opportunity in all these immigrants coming over.

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[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod.

Say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Dan Morgan]

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[Hayden Daniel]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

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[Dan Morgan]

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[Podcast Host]

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[Dan Morgan]

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[Hayden Daniel]

And the organization that capitalizes that the best is Tammany Hall. And you might have heard of Tammany Hall. 4. Tammany hall was founded in 1789 as a fraternal organization and it was restricted to men who, ironically enough, were 100% pure Americans. No immigrants allowed. An early leader of Tammany hall was Aaron Burr of, you know, duel with Alexander Hamilton fame, and Martin Van Buren, president after Andrew Jackson, was a close associate of Tammany Hall. Now, it started off as a nativist organization and did not have very good relations with the early Irish immigrants. But it slowly evolved into a very powerful political machine. In New York City politics, just to quickly define a political machine, is a highly centralized political organization that uses incentives like jobs, favors and money to recruit and maintain member loyalty. So they hand out, you know, government contracts, good government jobs, things like that to keep members happy and to buy votes, basically. Initially, again, Tammany hall and the Irish immigrants are opposed. But Tammany's electoral fortunes begin to decline in the 1840s. So they decide to court the Irish immigrants, a new voting base that they can tap into that the opposing party. Tammany hall is Democrat at this point. They are part of the Democratic Party. The other party they're mostly going against are the Whig Party. The Whigs are also very anti immigrant and we'll see what they turn into later. But Tammany decides, well, there's this whole untapped market for votes from these voters who the other party won't, won't court, will court them instead. So Tammany evolves into one of the first true community organizers in America and establishes a vast and powerful network of patronage, graft, and get out the vote operations that allowed it to completely dominate the politics of New York City for decades and decades. And decades, the organization would secure social services from the city jobs, whether that's direct government jobs like post masters, post men, things like that, customs officials and or even, you know, private jobs with private companies that were owned by members of Tammany hall and make sure that businessmen who were allied with Tammany hall would get juicy government contracts for constituents and things like that in exchange for votes. Tammany hall operatives soon found themselves in practically every influential office you can think of in New York City and expanded the graft operations from there. Now, what I've described before is often called honest graft, quote unquote. That's a term Tammany hall coin itself as honest graft. But they also engaged in just good old fashioned embezzlement, insider trading and other forms of just blanket corruption. In other words, they used the political power to help their friends in exchange for support. Tammany really cemented its power with the election of Fernando Wood as the mayor of New York in 1854. Wood would eventually go on and have a falling out with Tammany and would serve in the United States House of Representatives. And fun fact, Fernando Wood was one of the main opponents of the 13th Amendment in the House when it came up for a vote in 1865. Just as a little fun fact, the architect for Tammany Hall's rise to power, and by far their most famous member is Boss Tweed, whose real name is William Tweed Tweed. He was the son of a chair maker and his grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Scotland probably before, probably before the the revolution, but maybe just after the. The timeline isn't particularly clear. After succeeding Fernando Wood as the boss of Tammany, Queed proceeded to take over almost every facet of city life and just made sure that Tammany Hall's tentacles were just in every little facet that he could get into and could make money off of. He used city funds to dole out lucrative contracts to allies and spend on large urban projects that gave ample employment opportunities to his constituents and gave business allies ample opportunities for corruption and embezzlement. Is ring of Embezzlement, also known as the Queen ring, embezzled around $13 million. That's $178 million in today's money. In the 1860s and 70s, over his whole career as the boss of Tammany hall, we stole up to $200 million in 19th century dollars, that's $5 billion today. He was eventually arrested and convicted for stealing money. And after a brief prison escape, very dramatic prison escape, he died in jail in 1878. The Irish eventually take over Tammany hall and Irish Americans dominate its leadership for 50 years. We are officially in a market riptide with Iran. The Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chris Markowski Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. If you have a good portfolio with good companies, just get out of the way. Don't guess what's going to happen tomorrow.

[Podcast Host]

Do not fight the riptide.

[Hayden Daniel]

Whether it's happening in D.C. or down on Wall street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast now. The anti Irish sentiment that sort of bubbled up in response to their Catholicism and then in response to things like Tammy Hall's corruption boils over in several incidents of riots, violence and just general discrimination. The vast majority of Irishmen who came to America during the famine were subsistence farmers and had no real skills beyond basic farm work. So why did America allow English or Irish immigration if there was so much anti Irish and anti Catholic sentiment? The answer was cheap labor. It's because they were subsistence farmers with no real skills. They could under underbid just about any American laborer, so they became the source of cheap, plentiful labor for especially big cities on the east coast that were looking for cheap work either on the docks or in factories. Even before the wave of immigration from the famine, there were anti Irish riots in Philadelphia in 1844 and there are many instances of other attacks on Irishmen by irate Americans who mostly opposed the Catholic angle. There's an infamous incident during the Mexican American War. Some Irish who had signed up for the US army due to the allure of higher pay, higher pay compared to being, you know, a regular old wage labor. These Irish deserted during the Mexican American War and actually joined the Mexicans. Feeling greater affinity with their fellow Catholics than with the Americans. They formed the St Patrick's Battalion and fought in several battles against American forces. Eventually they were defeated, just like Mexico itself was defeated in the war. And overall 50 men from St. Patrick's Battalion were executed by the US army for desertion. Cartoonists like Thomas Nast very famously depicted Irishmen as violent drunkards hell bent on barbarism and destruction. If you go and look up especially Thomas Nast cartoons, they are very pointedly anti Irish in in in their tone and make the Irish people look terrible. Like I said, either as violent drunks or gullible people who are Led around by the likes of Boss Tweed into helping with corruption or as being beholden to the Pope. That's a. That's a big complaint about the Irish as being Catholic, they are beholden to the Pope in Rome rather than to America. So overall, American attitudes towards the Irish were pretty hostile in the 1840s, 50s and 60s, driven by competition for jobs, concern about crime, and most pointedly, their anti Catholicism.

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[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the

pod, so say hi, Dan.

[Dan Morgan]

Hey, how's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Podcast Host]

Awesome. So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What. What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open. Our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247 365.

[Hayden Daniel]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

[Hayden Daniel]

And this sort of comes to a head in the presidential election of 1856, in which a new party rises up to oppose Irish immigration. And that anti Irish and anti immigrant sentiment grew so much that it birthed the American party, more infamously known as the Know Nothings. Now they're called the Know Nothings because members were instructed to say I know nothing if an outsider asked them about specifics about their party. So they sort of started out as a sort of secret society that eventually became a legitimate political Party. Now Know Nothings were mainly comprised of former Whigs. Whigs were the ones who also opposed Irish immigration in the 1840s and continued to do so. But Whigs were the primary anti slavery party in America before the rise of the Republican party. But they were not as strongly anti slavery. They were more of a soft anti slavery party. They didn't want expansion into the west, they didn't want slavery to expand into the west, but otherwise they were not particularly anti slavery. They tried to forge a middle ground and eventually the Whigs. The Whig party eventually disintegrates because of the rising anti slavery attitude in the North. And the Whigs just kind of want to be the compromise party. And that's something that the, that the Know Nothings want to do too. They want to sort of sidestep the issue of slavery and promote immigration as the greatest threat to the country. By 1854, one in nine Americans were foreign born. And the Know Nothing stressed that the new immigrants were poor and taking jobs and that they were Catholic and therefore anti Protestant and sort of anti American values like Catholics, especially Catholics at this time, you know, can't adopt democracy. They just, they're not suited to self governing. One pro know nothing paper called the Baltimore Clipper wrote, let all sectional disputes and all discussion of the slave question be set aside. Our future should turn upon whether natives or foreigners shall rule, end quote. And that pretty much sums up the, the know nothing parties platform is that slavery isn't that important. We can figure that out later. The big question is whether we're going to let in more immigrants and whether immigrants should rule America or the native population should. I think in most American textbooks and history classes the know Nothings are kind of just glossed over. It's like, ah, well, it appeared in one election and then disappeared very quickly. But the Know Nothings actually enjoyed quite a bit of state and local successes in several states, especially Maryland where the party won the state's legislature and four out of six congressmen in 1854. Two years later it captured the state's governorship as well. Um, the party also swept Massachusetts and put in quite a few soft anti Catholic and anti Irish policies after they took power there. And it's very interesting to note that the know Nothings captured 52 seats in the House in 1854, which makes them the third largest party, I mean third largest party in the country by default. But Also they're only two seats away from becoming the second biggest party because the Whigs only capture 54 most of their Power comes from Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and New England, especially Massachusetts and New Hampshire. And that's very interesting because Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland were strongholds for Whigs. That's again the former Whigs sort of turning to the know nothings after the Whig party disintegrates. And Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland are also kind of the most neutral on slavery. Of course, all three of them are slave states, but they are declining in slave population, especially Kentucky and especially Maryland. And they are sort of desperate to sort of move on from the question, especially Kentucky. And it's very interesting that New England is very pro know nothing because they're going to become one of the hotbeds for Republican. The Republican party in the 1860 election. And 1856 is the first Republican presidential election. Not the first one that they, that they win, it's the first one that they run in. But New England becomes a stalwart bastion for the Republican Party and becomes one of the most flagrantly anti slavery areas in the country. And that's just interesting that in. But in 1854-1856 they were very anti immigrant and they, they seemed to switch to being anti slavery instead after the know nothings don't work out. Speaking of which, the movement's momentum sort of stalls and it fails to really come into its own as the new second party to replace the Whigs. And that begins with the defeat of the know nothing candidate in Virginia's 1855 gubernatorial election. And that's sort of like the bellwether for the 1856 election, because at this time Virginia is a lot like Kentucky and Tennessee and Maryland. They're sort of in the middle of the slavery debate. They're a bit more pro slavery than those three states, but they're still more moderate than say Mississippi or Alabama or South Carolina. And even at the time it was seen as a bellwether state. And they come up just short, the Know Nothings. They're very narrowly defeated, I think by like 4 points by the Democrats in 1855. And then the wind is sort of taken out of their sails even more when the new Republican Party, which has just been formed and is running John c. Fremont in 1856, siphoned votes from the north, from New England, while the south sort of rallies around the pro slavery Democrats in response to the Republican Party. So that siphons votes from Hennessy and Kentucky. And they run Democrats run Buchanan, who is more of a moderate Democrat, so he appeals to the more moderate voters in Tennessee and Kentucky. The know nothings run ex President Millard Fillmore as their candidate in 1856 and for that sort of stalled momentum for. Fillmore performs very well for a third party candidate. He receives 21.5% of the popular vote, but he only carries the state of Maryland, only gets eight electoral votes. So. And then after. After their failure in 1856, the. The know Nothing party really just starts to. To spiral out of control. And then sort of by 1860, it's totally dead. So it's. It was a flash in the pan that became very powerful very quickly and then fell almost as quickly as it rose. But it really underlines that sentiment that almost became a major national movement, that anti immigrant and anti Catholic sentiment. And, well, in a couple of instances, they. They had a. A pretty good point. The Irish brought grudges and political tensions with them across the Atlantic. It wasn't just the Americans and English who didn't like the Irish. The Irish also did not like the English at all and had a relatively low opinion of Americans who were descended from Englishmen and especially low opinion of Irishmen who were Protestant. Sectarian violence broke out in 1870 and 1871 during the Orange riots in New York City, which pitted Protestant Irish and Catholic Irish against each other. There were. The Protestant Irish were trying to have a parade, and the Irish Catholics came in and disrupted the parade, and there was fighting. Tammany tried to step in, and it didn't really work out. And on several occasions, there were riots throughout the city and dozens of people were killed in these riots. So it wasn't just sour words exchanged between the Protestants and the Catholics. It was real physical violence that these people were doing on the streets of America based on a, you know, feud that was centuries old in a. In another country across the ocean. That might sound familiar to instances today in which that still happens.

[Podcast Host]

I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod.

Say hi, Dan.

Hey.

[Dan Morgan]

How's it going today?

[Podcast Host]

It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.

[Dan Morgan]

I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is. Is America's largest injury law firm.

[Podcast Host]

That's pretty awesome. I think I saw a billboard of yours recently that said 20 billion won. 20 billion is an insane number.

[Dan Morgan]

Yeah, 20 billion recovered. It's actually, I think, somewhere north, probably closer to 22, 23 after this year. And each year we get bigger and badder and our army grows. So the number will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on.

[Hayden Daniel]

Awesome.

[Podcast Host]

So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan. What would I do if I got into an accident?

[Dan Morgan]

Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. We are always open or our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247365 wow.

[Podcast Host]

Dan Morgan from Morgan Morgan, America's large injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.

[Dan Morgan]

Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.

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[Hayden Daniel]

The Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish republican organization founded in 1858 launched several terrorist raids from from the United States from United States soil against British Canada to try to force Britain to withdraw from Ireland. And the Canadian militia and the British army had to mobilize to stop these raids. That's how that's how serious they were and the resident and the raids resulted in the deaths of 59 people on both sides. And I suspect almost nobody in America knows about that today. The US for its part, helped arrest members of the Fenian Brotherhood who were hiding out in America and confiscated weapons. But it just shows that Irish immigrants coming over brought their ancient feuds from the old country here to America and were willing to violently act out those feuds. And one quick side note, though they failed to make the Brits leave Ireland. That wouldn't happen for another 50 years. The raids are an important event in the formation of the Canadian Confederation 1867 because Britain's response was deemed to be pretty lackluster. And Canada then decided to sort of move towards a more unified government structured so they could respond to things like that more easily. Said a sort of unintended consequences of these pretty much terrorist attack is it started the process for creating the the country of Canada. Meanwhile, back in New York City, Tammany begins to decline in 1898 because of several reforms that are pushed through in New York City when it eventually dissolves totally in 1967. A shadow of its former self, of course. But it can't really be understated how much of a mark it leaves on American politics. It is the first main political machine in American politics and it's probably the most powerful that's ever existed at the city level. As a result, other political machines popped up in other northern cities like Boston which also catered to patronage for Irish immigrants and really relied on Irish support to create that political machine. But it's really that machine blueprint that Tammany pioneers and those successive machines that spring up in other cities across the north during the 1860s and 70s, especially in the last decades and decades and decades, they leave a lasting impact on American politics and eventually become state machines and even national political machines. And they spread all over the country. I mean, you have political machines out west in California, and then you have political machines in the south in places like Memphis. And in some ways, the New Deal nationalized Tammany's tactics of honest graft, of getting lots of goodies and jobs and contracts and bogus government help for your. For your constituents and patronage to create the political machine that kept Franklin Delano Roosevelt and later New Deal Democrats in power for literally decades. We still see that basic strategy of. Of tamity at. At. At play today in Democrat politics. Pander to certain subsections of the population, including foreign minorities, and build up a giant network of aid and patronage to those voters. And there's a healthy amount of fraud, embezzlement, and graft that goes with that. I mean, we've seen it in places like Minneapolis. And multiple investigations into Los Angeles and California in general seems to indicate that that sort of thing never really went away and in fact, that it's alive and well in today's politics. And it all started with trying to get votes from Irish immigrants. So overall, four and a half million Irishmen came to America between 1820 and 1930. Their assimilation took quite a long time, at least from heritage Americans perspective and the people who are already here. While anti Irish sentiment, many heritage Americans thought that Irishman could never be assimilated, that they'll always be sort of this other, this separated minority in America that they can never learn to be to live in a. In a republic. But that sentiment began to decline with the influx of other immigrants like Italians and Eastern Europeans in the late 1880s into the 1890s and onward. But the negative stereotypes of Irishman as sort of the Thomas Nast caricatures of, you know, alcoholic foreign barbarians who were just looking to, you know, commit crimes and things continues well into the Prohibition era. In fact, that's one of the main caricatures used to sort of gin up, pun intended support for Prohibition was to try and say that, you know, German criminals get drunk and then go out and, you know, smash windows or accost women or go and break into people's houses and things, and that's how they sort of promoted Prohibition. But those stereotypes as of Irishmen, as you know, Aileen and others, does start to decline from the 1890s on. And then I think it really disappears with the election of Kennedy in 1960. That's sort of like the final death knell of Irishmen as non Americans. It had probably mostly disappeared before that, but that's kind of the final. The final say. We had really gotten over that. And today, of course, like I said at the beginning of the show, we see the Irish as just as American as anybody else, really. And a lot of non Irish people do take part in Irish cultural stuff like St. Patrick's Day. But I think the main point is we often ask who's to blame for the broken and corrupt politics that we see play out Today in Washington, D.C. and states like California or cities like Minneapolis. Certainly the people who continue to rob and defraud the American people today need to be held accountable for all. For all that corruption and graft, honest or not. But we see the origins for this system of graft and crooked backroom deals stretch all the way back to the beginning of political machines in the 1840s with the rise of Tammany Hall. So are the Irish immigrants to blame for coming and then voting in sort of this tribalistic way as a group because they've been, you know, courted by this very obviously corrupt political machine, and then, you know, they willfully feed off of the government corruption provided to them by politicians like Boss Tweed and. And Tammany Hall? Or do we blame the politicians who pander to and use the Irish to build their sort of empires of corruption? I noted it earlier, but it should be noted again that William Tweed, the man perhaps most responsible for the power and influence of Tammany hall, and then, therefore, you could say the power and influence of machine politics in America stretching all the way forward to New Deal, all the way up to today in American politics. He would be considered a heritage American today, as I said, his grandfather came probably before the Revolution, and if not, right after the revolution. So he. And he's from Scotland. So most people would say William Tweed was a heritage American. He's just as American as anybody else, but perhaps he deserves quite a bit of the blame for the state of our politics today. So I ask that you decide who's to blame. Is it the group, or is it the individuals within that group, or is it being the people who take advantage of that group who are truly to blame for what we. The situation that we've found ourselves in. Thank you so much for listening today on this very special episode. And this is another edition of Hayden's History Hour. I'm Hayden Daniel, editor at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom? Anxious for the frame?

[Podcast Host]

Oh, Danny boy? The pipes, the pipes are calling.

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