From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

"From Dublin to Chicago." You can take the phrase as the epitome of a tragedy, the long, slow, century and a half old tragedy of the flight of the Irish people from their own country, the flight of the younger men and women of our race from the land of their birth to the "Oilean r," the new island of promise and hope across the Atlantic. Much might be written very feelingly about that exodus. The first part of it began in reality long ago, in the middle of the 18th century, when the farmers of north-east Ulster were making their struggle for conditions of life which were economically possible. When the land war of those days was being waged and the fighters on the one side were called "Hearts of Steel," that war which resulted in the establishment of the once famous Ulster Custom, hopeless men fled with their families from Belfast, from Derry, and from many smaller northern ports. They settled in America and avenged their wrongs in the course of the War of Independence. For the rest of Ireland the great exodus began later. Not until the middle of the 19th century when the famine of 1846 and the following years showed unmistakably that the social order of Connaught and Munster was impossible. It continued, that exodus, all through the years of the later land war. It is still going on, though the stream is feebler to-day. I could write a good deal about this exodus, could tell of forsaken cottages, of sorrowful departures, of broken hearts left behind. But it was not in the spirit of tragedy that we made our expedition to America, from Dublin to Chicago. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56348
Author: Birmingham, George A.
Release Date: Jan 9, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English