http://www.ck12.org Chapter 4. Manifest Destiny and the Slavery Question
4.5 Irish Immigration
In the 1840s, a disease killed most of the potato plants in Ireland, leaving the Irish without enough food to eat. To
escape the so-called Irish Potato Famine, many Irish immigrated to the United States. Once there, however, they
faced strong anti-Irish discrimination. The Irish had long been oppressed and looked down on by neighboring Britain,
and many Americans were of British ancestry. Most Irish were Catholic, and most Americans were Protestants with
a strong anti-Catholic prejudice. Most Irish were poor and entered American life at the bottom of the social ladder.
Today, it seems obvious that people of Irish descent are racially ’white,’ but this was not so clear to the people of the
1840s. Examine the following documents and try to determine whether the Irish were considered ’white’ in the 19th
century.
Black vs. Irish - Thomas Nast
Source: A cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast for the cover of Harper’s Weekly, December 7, 1876.(Figure 4.7).
Questions:
- The man in the “white” scale is supposed to be Irish. What is the message of this cartoon?
- Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, drew forHarper’s Weekly. Based on this cartoon, what sort of people do you
think readHarper’s Weekly?
Cartoon in a Newspaper, 1883
Source: Political cartoon published in Puck humor magazine on May 9, 1883.(Figure 4.8).
Questions:
- The angry woman in the cartoon is supposed to be Irish. Describe what she looks like and how she’s acting.
- Based on this cartoon, what job do you think many Irish women had in the 1880s? What were some stereotypes
about Irish women?
Excerpt from The Know-Nothing and American Crusader –July 29, 1854
Source: An item that ran in The Know-Nothing and American Crusader, a nativist, anti-Catholic newspaper pub-
lished in Boston.
Providence, July 22, 1854
SAM
THINGS WHICH ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND ALL TRUE ROMAN CATHOLICS HATE