Civil War Historian, Tonya Graham McQuade, delivered an engaging yet heartbreaking insight into the Irish ballad, Paddy’s Lament, at the Civil War Roundup Speaker Series.
Tonya shared how the Great Potato Famine (1845-1855) was an agonizing human experience of starvation, sickness, and disease, forcing app. 2 million Irish in search of a better life across the Atlantic.
Voyages were often deadly. An estimated 100,000 passengers and crew died during migration on “coffin ships,” sickness and disease intensified by crowding, lengthy sea journeys. Only one ship was ever documented to have arrived with all passengers alive (plus those born at sea). If passengers survived round one of dysentery, typhoid, and cholera, they’d be lucky if they made it out of dockside quarantine.
Instead of pastures green, immigrants arrived in heavy spirits to docks burdened with the Union’s fallen. It is among the swathes of coffins that Irish men were armed to fight for Lincoln, incentivized by enlistment bonuses, pay, clothing, food, and pensions.
Trapped in poverty and facing discrimination from Americans, the Irish were eager to prove their worth. 150,000 bravely fought for the Union, but like other minority groups, found their countrymen used as cannon fodder. After the war ended in 1856, the survivors – many bilateral amputees – were forced to fight for their government pensions.
Powerfully written, Paddy’s Lament is a gut-wrenching look at Ireland’s struggle. As any folk ballad, different versions exist, however, all are a sucker punch to the gut, asking the big question–was Paddy right to regret leaving and to discourage his countrymen from doing the same?
We have to ask ourselves, how might we measure the success of the Irish immigrant population from this time period? How much weight should be attributed to the Irish brigades for the Union Army’s victory, and ultimately abolishing slavery? Does the loss of Irish lives counter the success that came later?
In recent decades, the landscape of the U.S.A. has changed because of improvements made to the welfare system, all signed into law by presidents with Irish ancestry; Kennedy trailblazed civil rights for people with intellectual difficulties, proposed the Civil Rights Act 1963 – signed in 1964 by Lyndon Jonson, along with Medicare; and Obama introduced the Affordable Care Act.
As with all historical events, wisdom comes from lived experience and hindsight. I wonder now, as America’s political pendulum swings, how many would like a reverse journey back across the pond.
Paddy’s Lament.
Source: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2023/09/21/the-heartbreaking-civil-war-ballad-of-paddys-lament-part-i/
Oh, it’s by the hush, me boys, and sure that’s to hold yer noise,
And listen to poor Paddy’s sad narration;
I was by hunger pressed and in poverty distressed,
So I took a thought I’d leave the Irish nation.
Here youse boys, do take my advice;
To Americay I’d have youse not be coming.
There is nothing here but war where the murdering cannons roar,
And I wish I was at home in dear old Éirinn.
Then I sold me horse and plow, me little pigs and cow,
And me little farm of land then I parted;
And me sweetheart Biddy McGee I’m afeard I’ll never see,
For I left her that morning broken-hearted.
Then meself and a hundred more to Americay sailed o’er,
Our fortune to be making we were thinking;
When we landed in Yankee land, they shoved a gun into our hand,
Saying, “Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln.”
General Meagher to us said, “If you get shot or lose your head,
Every mother’s son of youse will get a pension.”
In the war I lost me leg, all I’ve now is a wooden peg;
On my soul, it is the truth to you I mention.
Now I’d think meself in luck to be fed upon Indian buck
In old Ireland, the country I delight in;
And with the devil I do say, “Curse Americay,”
For I’ve sure I’ve got enough of their hard fighting.