[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 50 (Thursday, March 22, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1933-S1935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING IRISH IMMIGRANTS AND IRISH-AMERICANS IN ILLINOIS--

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this past Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. 
The city of Chicago celebrated, as it has every St. Patrick's Day since 
1962, by dyeing the Chicago River a deep emerald green.
  In the Windy City and in cities and towns throughout Illinois, across 
America, and around much of the world, people wore green and attended 
St. Patrick's Day parades and parties.
  No nation--including Ireland herself--celebrates St. Patrick's Day 
with as much enthusiasm as Americans do. Whether your ancestors came to 
this country from Dublin or the Dominican Republic, from Galway or 
Greece, on March 17, as the saying goes, everyone is Irish.
  But America didn't always love the Irish. From the middle of the 19th 
century and well into the 20th century, it was not uncommon for 
employment ads in America to carry the warning: ``No Irish Need 
Apply.'' In 1857, Harpers Weekly asserted that ``nearly 75 percent of 
our criminals and paupers are Irish . . . [and] 75 percent of the 
crimes of violence committed among us are the work of Irishmen.''
  Irish immigrants had been an integral part of America since our 
earliest days as a nation. Nine of the 56 men who signed the 
Declaration of Independence were Irish Americans. They included four 
men who were born in Ireland. And Irish Americans fought and died in 
the Revolutionary War to secure America's freedom from England.
  The Irish who came to America beginning in the mid-1840s, however, 
were different than the earlier arrivals from Erin's shores. These were 
``the Famine Irish.'' They fled Ireland to escape one of the greatest 
catastrophes ever to befall that nation.
  We know it today as ``the potato famine.'' In Ireland, it was called 
``the Great Hunger'' or, in Gaelic, the old Irish tongue, ``An Gorta 
Mor.''
  In 1845, a fungus, carried to Ireland from America, destroyed all of 
Ireland's potato crops. All across Ireland, potato fields turned black 
and rotted from the blight.
  Ireland was not an independent nation then, as it is now. It had been 
occupied and ruled for hundreds of years by England, and most of the 
land was owned by absentee English landlords.
  The native Irish were mostly tenant farmers, what Americans would 
call ``sharecroppers,'' allowed to farm only tiny plots of land. The 
calorie-rich potato became the subsistence crop for the Irish, the one 
crop they could grow on their small parcels of land that could feed a 
family.
  When the potato crops failed, England refused to intervene. Some in 
England warned that providing emergency food relief to the starving 
Irish would disrupt with the workings of a free market. Others declared 
that famine

[[Page S1934]]

and death were God's way of punishing the Irish.
  Starving Irish who could no longer pay their rent were driven off 
their land and into workhouses. Others died on the sides of roads, 
their mouths stained green from eating grass. Soon, typhus and cholera 
were claiming as many lives as starvation.
  When the Great Hunger began, 3 million people lived in Ireland. Three 
years later, 1 million people had died, and another 1 million had fled 
Ireland, most of them to America. In the period between 1845 and 1860, 
approximately 20,000 Irish a month were flooding into America.
  They called America ``An t-Oilean Ur''--``The Fresh Land,'' but many 
of the old prejudices followed them. The Famine Irish, the first large 
group of non-Protestants immigrants to America, were derided as 
superstitious Papists incapable of adapting to America's Anglo-Saxon 
culture.
  Irish Americans were denounced as ``simian'' or apelike.
  An editorial published in the Chicago Tribune in 1855 captured the 
antipathy with which many native-born Americans regarded Irish 
immigrants. It asked, ``Who does not know that the most depraved, 
debased, worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the 
community are Irish Catholics?''
  In the 1850s, a new political party emerged. The Native American 
Party, better known as the ``Know Nothings,'' was virulently anti-
Catholic and anti-immigrant.
  Many politicians were cowed by the anger of the Know Nothings, but 
Abraham Lincoln was not. Lincoln employed Irish staff at his home in 
Springfield and, later, in the White House. He donated to Irish famine 
relief.
  In a letter he wrote to a friend in 1855, he came out foursquare 
against Know Nothingness. ``How can anyone who abhors the oppression of 
Negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people?'' he asked. 
``Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,'' As a 
nation, we began by declaring that `all men are created equal.' We now 
practically read it `all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When 
the Know-Nothings get control, it will read `all men are created equal, 
except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to 
this,'' Lincoln continued, ``I should prefer emigrating to some country 
where they make no presence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, 
where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of 
hypocrisy.''
  A decade later, Lincoln's brave refusal to embrace the bigotry of the 
Know Nothings helped save the Union. Although Irish Americans were 
mostly Democrats, they heeded the call of America's first Republican 
President to save the Union when slavery threatened to destroy it.
  During the Civil War, more than 150,000 of the reviled Irish rallied 
to the side of Lincoln and the Union. They included some of Lincoln's 
best generals.
  Among them was Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher. A brilliant 
orator and the son of a wealthy Catholic family in Ireland, Meagher was 
a leader in a failed 1848 revolution in Ireland called the Young 
Ireland Rebellion. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to a life 
in exile in an Australian penal colony. Within 3 years, he had escaped 
to New York and became a prominent attorney.
  Thomas Meagher's remarkable, improbable life is told in an excellent 
new biography, ``The Immortal Irishman,'' by National Book Award winner 
Timothy Egan. I recommend it highly.
  When the Civil War broke out, Tom Meagher wrote to President Lincoln 
seeking permission to form an ethnic Irish brigade. He recruited a full 
company of infantrymen to be attached to the U.S. 69th Infantry 
Regiment New York State Volunteers.
  ``The Fighting 69th'' fought in some of the war's bloodies conflicts, 
including the first battle of Bull Run and the battles of Antietam and 
Chancellorsville. After seeing Meagher's men at the Battle of 
Fredericksburg, General Robert E. Lee declared, ``Never were men so 
brave.''
  The Fighting 69th was not the only Irish brigade fighting for the 
Union.
  This year, Illinois is celebrating its 200th anniversary as a State. 
Among the countless chapters in our State's history in which we take 
pride is the story of the 23rd Regiment of the Illinois Infantry, 
Illinois' own ``Irish Brigade.''
  The brigade's commander, James Mulligan, was born in New York and 
moved to Chicago as a boy. He became the first graduate of Chicago's 
first university, St. Mary's of the Lake. Later, he became a lawyer and 
a friend and confidant of Stephen Douglas.
  When the Civil War broke out, Mulligan placed an ad in the Chicago 
Tribune on April 20, 1861, calling for a rally that evening. Thirty-two 
men enlisted at the rally; 3 days later, 1,000 men had joined the 
regiment.
  Mulligan's Irish brigade spent most of the war in Virginia. They 
participated in Siege of Petersburg, and they were present for Lee's 
surrender at Appomattox.
  James Mulligan did not live to see the Union victory. He was wounded 
on September 19, 1864, at the third battle on Winchester. As his Irish 
soldiers rushed to his side, Mulligan saw that the colors of the 23rd 
Illinois were about to be captured, and he gave his men an order, ``Lay 
me down, and save the flag.''
  The colors were saved; Mulligan was captured and died of his wounds 
in Confederate captivity.
  Private Albert Cashier was an Irish immigrant who fought for 3 years 
with the 95th Illinois Infantry, Company G. At just 5' 3'', he was the 
smallest man in his company and, many said, the bravest.
  He returned to Belvidere, IL, after the war, and in 1869, he moved to 
Saunemin, IL, where he made his living as a farmhand and church 
janitor.
  In 1911, after he was hit by a car and was no longer able to work, 
Albert Cashier moved to the soldiers and sailors home in Quincy, 
Illinois.
  His mental state deteriorated, and he was moved to Watertown State 
Hospital for the Insane. It was there that hospital staff discovered 
his secret and told it to newspapers: Albert Cashier was born Jennie 
Hodgers.
  The reactions were disastrous for Private Cashier. The government 
charged him with defrauding the government in order to receive a 
pension. The case was dropped after Private Cashier's comrades from the 
95th Illinois rallied to his defense.
  The hospital staff forced Private Cashier to wear women's clothing. 
At 67 and frail, he tripped on his skirt, broke his hip, and spent the 
rest of his life despondent and bedridden.
  He died on October 10, 1915, and was buried in the Army uniform he 
had kept intact all those years. His tombstone was inscribed ``Albert 
D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Inf.''
  Albert Cashier is one of the best known of the 400 women who fought 
in the Civil War.
  Whether Private Cashier was transgender or simply a woman unwilling 
to accept the severe limits imposed on women in the 19th century will 
likely never be known.
  This much is clear, however: The brave service of Irish Americans in 
the Civil War helped to diminish the hostility that greeted the Famine 
Irish. Within two or three generations, Americans would elect two 
Irish-American Presidents: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, still the only 
Catholic President, and Ronald Reagan.
  Some of the voices we hear in today's immigration debate would sound 
right at home among the Know Nothings of Lincoln's time. Sadly, one of 
the loudest of those harsh voices belongs to the current President of 
the United States.
  President Trump opened his campaign by vilifying Mexican immigrants. 
He tried to ban visitors from seven predominantly Muslim nations from 
entering the United States. He has cruelly placed Dreamers in legal 
jeopardy. He has recommended cutting legal immigration--legal 
immigration--to America by one-half, to its lowest levels since the 
1920s.
  President Trump's anti-immigrant, antirefugee proposals are an 
affront to America's history as a nation of immigrants, and they would 
deal a harsh blow to our economic future. If you doubt it, just ask 
yourself: Where would America's economy be today without the 
contributions of immigrants Sergey Brin and Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs, 
the son of a Syrian immigrant?
  I believe that future generations of Americans will look back on 
today's anti-immigrant agitators with sadness

[[Page S1935]]

and bewilderment. They will applaud those Americans who worked to 
preserve America's values as a nation of immigrants.
  I am proud to say that one of those champions is an Irish immigrant 
from Chicago. His name is Billy Lawless. He moved to America with his 
family nearly 20 years ago.
  Billy, his wife, Anne, and their four grown children are all American 
citizens now. Together, they own some of the best, most popular 
restaurants and pubs in Chicago.
  Billy Lawless is also a tireless and eloquent advocate for 
immigration reform. It is not just Irish immigrants that he cares 
about; it is all immigrants and refugees. He is chairman of a group 
called Chicago Celts for Immigration Reform and a founding member of 
the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition.
  Two years ago, he gained another, extraordinary platform from which 
to advocate for just immigration policies. Lawless, who holds duel 
U.S.-Irish citizenship, was appointed to serve in the Irish Senate, 
representing the Irish Diaspora overseas.
  ``The America that I believe in,'' he says, ``is a humane nation. It 
is the land of the free, the land of opportunity, and the land of 
immigrants.''
  Let us remember that this month, as we celebrate the contributions of 
Irish immigrants to America.

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