Irish Immigrants in Boston Essay - 2765 Words

Irish Immigrants in Boston The life of Irish immigrants in Boston was one of poverty and discrimination. The religiously centered culture of the Irish has along with their importance on family has allowed the Irish to prosper and persevere through times of injustice. Bostons Irish immigrant population amounted to a tenth of its population. Many after arriving could not find suitable jobs and ended up living where earlier generations had resided. This attributed to the invisibility of the Irish. Much of the very early migration had been heavily male, but during the famine years, migration was largely a family affair. Families were arriving serially in ?chain? migration while others suffered high mortality rates in these years.†¦show more content†¦One leading Irish-American politician, John Mitchel, wrote in his newspaper, The Citizen in 1856: He would be a bad Irishman who voted for principles which jeopardized the present freedom of a nation of white men, for the vague forlorn hope of elevating blacks to a level for which it is at least problematical whether God and nature ever intended them. So the Irish tended to be in favor of slavery and against abolition. This was just another reason why many of the people around them did not get along with them, this in turn probably making their lives harder and less enjoyable. However, at the outbreak of the Civil War an estimated 170,000 men born in Ireland joined the Union Army, but only about 40,000 were in the Confederate Army. This occurred because the issue for the Irish was not so much slavery as it was preserving the Union. The church in Boston agreed with Archbishop Hughes that ?It is one country and shall be one?. After the Civil War, attitudes toward the Irish shifted slightly, and the Irish Need Not Apply signs on businesses, that had been so common decades before, began to disappear. The Irish had heavily participated in the war: thirty nine Union regiments contained a majority of Irishmen, and the 69th regiment was comprised almost totally of Irishmen. The Irish Americans gained some respect for their involvement in the Civil War and were now more accepted by American society. The Irish Americans in the post-Civil War time period wereShow MoreRelatedEssay about The Plight of Immigrants to Boston894 Words   |  4 PagesThe Plight of Immigrants to Boston Since its conception in the early 1600s, Boston, the so-called City on a Hill, has opened its doors to all people of all ethnic and religious background. 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