Recently, eminent historian Eric Foner was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for chronicling Abraham Lincoln's world and his rise to leading our nation during the great contest over how to resolve the presence of slaves in a "free" society. As Foner points out, African Americans -- slave or free -- weren't included as citizens in Lincoln's America. The Constitution implicitly treated slaves as property, and beginning in 1795, United States naturalization laws restricted citizenship to white people.
Furthermore preventing the spread of slavery wasn't simply a moral quibble, poor whites like the Lincolns feared being forced off their land by the slave powered plantation economy, not without reason. But as Foner points out poor farmers weren't the only ones who wanted a whites only society. When a bright young black named Martin Delany showed up at Harvard Medical School, he created quite a stir and was told to go home, and it certainly wasn't Irish immigrants who told him to leave.
Ironically at the very same time Harvard slammed the door on Delany, a remarkable story was unfolding at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester a few miles down the pike from Harvard. The Healy brothers, children of an Irish immigrant, but slaves according to the law of Georgia, had been taken in by the Jesuits (aka, the Society of Jesus). "Incredibly," Holy Cross had been bankrolled by the successful Irish canal and railroad builder, Tobias Boland, one of the immigrant class Mr. Page blamed for bumping African Americans of America's ladder of upward mobility. Instead of making a dangerous return to Georgia, the Healy children spent their holidays with the Boland family. In time the eldest Healy son would become Holy Cross's first valedictorian and Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland. His brother Patrick would become president of Georgetown University and his brother Michael the Coast Guard's hero of Alaska who defended Native Americans and helped inspire Jack London's "The Sea Wolf."
Furthermore preventing the spread of slavery wasn't simply a moral quibble, poor whites like the Lincolns feared being forced off their land by the slave powered plantation economy, not without reason. But as Foner points out poor farmers weren't the only ones who wanted a whites only society. When a bright young black named Martin Delany showed up at Harvard Medical School, he created quite a stir and was told to go home, and it certainly wasn't Irish immigrants who told him to leave.
Ironically at the very same time Harvard slammed the door on Delany, a remarkable story was unfolding at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester a few miles down the pike from Harvard. The Healy brothers, children of an Irish immigrant, but slaves according to the law of Georgia, had been taken in by the Jesuits (aka, the Society of Jesus). "Incredibly," Holy Cross had been bankrolled by the successful Irish canal and railroad builder, Tobias Boland, one of the immigrant class Mr. Page blamed for bumping African Americans of America's ladder of upward mobility. Instead of making a dangerous return to Georgia, the Healy children spent their holidays with the Boland family. In time the eldest Healy son would become Holy Cross's first valedictorian and Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland. His brother Patrick would become president of Georgetown University and his brother Michael the Coast Guard's hero of Alaska who defended Native Americans and helped inspire Jack London's "The Sea Wolf."
The connection between the Irish and the building trades also brought Dennis Hart Mahan to West Point, where the son of a carpenter excelled as a student and was sent to France to study engineering. He returned and helped turn West Point into early America's premier engineering school. Mahan was also interested in military science. His students would lead the Union army during the Civil War. Notably, Sherman, Sheridan and George Gordon Meade, commander of the Union army at Gettysburg, like Mahan, were all rasied by Irish Catholic families. Even Grant had a Kelly in his closet.
Making immgrants scapegoats for American's problems has a long and enduring history and, if John McCain is mistaken in his remarks, putting them in their historical context might help us better understand our problems today... even the most sanctimonius among us, including Mr. Page and the Arizona Republic, have their senior moments and substitute traditional prejudice to for reality.
