We're all a little Irish Pt. 3 of 4

“The first Irish resident of New York City? Why, St. Brendan the Navigator, of course! Eight-HUNDRED years ago…No! Just kidding, but Irish sailors and merchants have been coming here since the days of Dutch New York, or New Amsterdam as it was known. In fact, the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was in 1766, ten years before the revolution. It was a very different parade, though. These were Irish Protestants marching as part of the British Royal Army. The sort that eventually perpetrated the Orange Riots of the next century as an attempt to suppress the new Irish Catholic uprising that was happening all over these streets.”
“Catholics…” At which point I suck my teeth dramatically. “It all started with the Irish in the 1840’s! Sure, you had Italians, Poles, some Germans, Jews even hanging around the outskirts of New York, but this was an proud old Knickerbockers town. names like Van Wyck, or Vanderbilt, of good Dutch or English protestant stock. Native Americans as they were called before that became a more politically correct term for In’jins. It was the potato famine of ’43 that sent them here by the boatload.
Poor dirt-farmers, carrying disease, hunger hanging around their gaunt frames like a plague. Alcoholism in the five points was an epidemic. Less than one percent of the immigrants who came over were literate. And the Nativists, the old guard who stood at the port watching ship after ship come into the busy harbor were ready for them. With rocks in hand.
This was, of course, before ’61. Before there was a dramatic turnaround and the boatloads of refugees were welcoming with open arms. The young men, mostly. They were given a cup of soup, and a crust of bread, and for just a quick X on a piece of paper filled with long words and small print, they were given a fresh batch of new clothes. Uniforms actually. All blue, complete with hat, badge and rifle. They didn’t stay in New York for long. By the next day most of them were off to places with names like Gettysburg or Antietam.
The turnover from Immigrant to Union Soldier to Corpse for those four years was startling. And it left a mark on those who survived.
Whether it was the Civil War, or it was the racism they faced from a nation that still clung to some of the ghosts of its father empire. Perhaps it was the Irish Need Not Apply or Dogs and Irish Not Allowed signs that most businesses put in their windows. Or it was the cartoons that were published in Harper’s Weekly that portrayed them as little more than well-dressed apes. For nearly thirty years, they had persevered under the city’s heel, with no jobs, no respect, no chance at upward mobility except for one essential bargaining chip that was their birthright upon their re-christening as Americans.
They could vote.
And with now thousands of Irish men on the streets of New York, a master King-Maker like William “The Boss” Tweed knew he could manipulate this influence. Tammany Hall, the old New York Democratic institution developed brute squads made up of some of the toughest gang-members that had sprung up out of the Irish populace. The Bowery Boys, the Dead Rabbits, the Forty-Thieves, and Plug Uglies would get to politicking months before the elections.
A one Capt. Isaiah Rynders way back in 1835 was the first one to really sway the vote. You could call him the “Jack Abramoff” of his day. He would organize the gang influence and use tactics such as spreading word through the saloons to vote one way. I remember the very effective Vote for Tim Sullivan or Lose a Finger campaign. Or reminding all the fellas to grow their beards out a couple months before election-day. When the day came, the barber shops were ready at first dawn for the drill: They’d vote, come in, lose the beard, vote, come back, lose the moustache, vote.
How else do you think a crooked saloon-keeper like “Big Tom” Foley could rise up to a Democratic party boss. He would eventually have a square around the corner named after him and he would act as a mentor to a kid named Al Smith. Al was from the Lower East Side, and he got his “degree” from the Fulton Fish Market University. And he eventually became governor of New York. A great governor at that, and eventually the Democratic Candidate for President in 1928. Would’ve been the first Catholic President, over thirty years before Kennedy.
The astounding spires at 50th & 5th completed in 1878 say it all: We’re here. We’re proud. We’ve got power now. And we’re here to stay.”

From there we returned to the bus. And were off to the Irish Hunger Memorial.