America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army

2. The Most Audacious Rascals Existing: The Irish in the Continental Army

C HAP T E R TWO The Most Audacious Rascals Existing: The Irish in the Continental Army P robably in no part of Europe was the effect of the American revolt and British policy more deeply debated, written about, or considered than in Ireland. For many Americans, Ireland was a kindred spirit and an entity separate from Great Britain; it was another land held in subjugation and oppression. Stories carried to America by emigrants strengthened the connection between the two colonies. The British, on the other hand, viewed Ireland "with the assurance of a landowner speaking of the remote corners of his estate." I Past historiography on Irish participation in the American Revolution has confined itself to arguments about the extent of Irish enlistment in the Continental army or the most patriotic ethnic subgroup (Celtic or Scotch-Irish). Numerous historians of generations past have commented on the revolutionary fervor of Irish immigrants. The Scotch-Irish, in particular, were credited by many observers as being active in the Continental army. David Ramsey, an eyewitness to the Revolution, remarked, for instance, that "the Irish in America, with a few exceptions, were attached to Independence." He noted that many soldiers in the Pennsylvania line were of Irish descent, but he was careful to reveal that "they were mostly Presbyterians, and therefore mostly Whigs."2 Horace Walpole and even George III were under the impression that the whole war was "little more than an uprising of rabble-rousing Presbyterians, largely Scotch-Irish: a sort of latter-day Cromwellian outburst against the due civil, ecclesiastical, and political order of a sensible and free British 28 • The Most Audacious Rascals Existing empire." 3 Few of these eyewitnesses to the Revolution attempted to support their impressions with hard evidence. However, more recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Revolution did indeed have the trans-Atlantic roots suspected by Ramsay, Walpole , and George III. A number of path-breaking studies have concluded that the American Revolution was just one rebellion in a cycle of revolt that took place throughout the Atlantic community during the eighteenth century. These revolts were led by a wide variety of groups: sailors, slaves, artisans, farmers, and waged urban workers.4 There is substantial evidence that the American and Irish revolutionary movements were connected in a number of ways. Irishmen closely followed events unfolding in America through the Freeman's Journal, edited by the Irish radical, Charles Lucas. Letters from Irishmen to the Journal raised questions about the rights of Englishmen when they became colonists. The Stamp Act was strongly debated in its pages. Lucas even ran a series of articles on the subversion of civil authority by military forces quartered among the Americans. Following the Boston Massacre, he asked James Bowdoin and Joseph Warren, two future prominent leaders of the American rebellion, "What redress do you expect for grievances in America, which [had been long] grown familiar in England, and almost the established sole mode of government in Ireland?" Lucas equated "oppression" in America with "the heavy Yoke of Tyranny" in Ireland. 5 Ireland, in fact, had been a hotbed of discontent for a number of years preceding the American Revolution. In County Antrim alone, more than 30,000 cottagers had been evicted due to the collapse of the weaving industry and high rents demanded by landlords. A handloom weaving collapse in Cork in 1769, a potato and grain failure from 1765 to 1767, and a linen industry depression all served to cause a great number of desperate Irishmen to be bound for America as servants. Disturbances in Munster in the 1760s broke out intermittently in Cork, Kilkenny, Limerick , Tipparary, and Waterford. Agrarian disorders manifested themselves in the Whiteboy movement and among the "Levellers" who rode about the countryside at night blowing horns, pulling down fences, and attacking British tax officials.6 Ireland was a natural point of reference for the Americans to draw from and an obvious quarter from which to expect allies. 7 It was also morally advantageous for Americans to appear as citizens of the world. By presenting their grievances against the British with an international, The Most Audacious Rascals Existing • 29 even universal rhetoric, the Americans portrayed the struggle in terms that would strike the most fear in the hearts of the British administration and generate the greatest solidarity from other parts of the world. When news of celebrations of the Sons of Liberty in Boston reached Ireland...