Various

“ Of all those who by immigration have helped to people our country, the Irish have come imbued with the most intense feeling of loyalty towards our institutions, and it may be safely asserted that, since our independence of English rule was proclaimed, every true Irishman has felt, on landing in America, that the American shore was not a foreign shore for him. To perpetuate this feeling is the crowning object for which the society is organized. ”

“ The characteristics which we deem essentially Irish are not distinctly Irish; they are merely more widely distributed among the Irish. Wit, humor, poesy, melancholy, loyalty to faith and fatherland, patience under trial and hardship, daring in adventure, valor in battle,—these are found in all lands, among all peoples, though the Irish have displayed them so conspicuously in all the centuries that some, aye, many of our own people have come to regard them as exclusively theirs. ”

“ What lover of the human race, animated by that noble sentiment of Terence, “I am a man, and I think nothing human foreign to me,” can fail to appreciate the sturdy virtues of the Irish people in America, their patient industry, their obedience to constituted authority, their domestic constancy, their desire to provide homes for their families and education for their children? ”

“ Because such persons love a new country, there is no reason why they should cease to love the old country. They would show a lack of right feeling were they to do so. I heartily favor the formation of societies by studious people interested in the history of different elements of our population, and should think that Americans of Irish origin would find the study of the history of the Irish in this country especially interesting and profitable. They would find, I should think, a rich return in striving to bring to light incidents in their history by forming a society with this purpose in view. ”

“ To be the bearer of such information is generally a pleasant duty; and it would be a pleasure to us in this instance, were it not for the bereavement felt so keenly by every member of our society because of the death of its first President-General, the late Richard W. Meade, Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy—illustrious in name and lineage and in the annals of his country.
It is a great honor to you, sir, to have been selected by the unanimous voice of our council to the highest office in our society, in immediate succession to such an illustrious man. ”

“ My Dear Sir:—I am in full accord with a movement toward the establishment of an American Historical Society, according to the lines projected by you. The object is most praiseworthy, and the results will be most valuable. It is a shame for us that so much valuable matter has been lost because of no medium of salvation. Let us save what we can, and gather together the records of our race in the fields of literature, patriotism, business, and professional life. ”

“ My descent from Irish ancestry, of which I am justly proud, and also from the English and Welsh, not only enables me to regard myself as among typical Americans in respect of origin, as well as aspirations and pride of country, but renders me fondly sympathetic with the aims and purposes of this American-Irish Society. ”

“ From the time of the Roman retrocession from England until the landing of William the Norman at Hastings, that unfortunate land was in the hands of one of the dullest, most unimaginative, worst-governed, and worst-governing races history mentions—the Saxons—for six hundred years; it had become a congeries of warring, military chieftainship, in which civilization was almost obliterated, learning had disappeared, religion was at its lowest ebb, life and property had no safety, the people were enslaved, and the coast harried by foreign and victorious foes. ”

“ As an American in the ninth American generation, who, by the services of three great grandfathers in the armies of the Revolution, holds membership in both the ‘Sons of the Revolution’ and ‘Sons of the American Revolution,’ and as a member of the ‘Essex Institute’ and ‘Roxbury Military Historical Society,’ both devoted to historical research, I naturally desire that all branches of our country’s history should receive the attention they deserve. ”

“ Until recently I possessed probably the largest library and the largest collection of autographic documents bearing on American history ever held by one individual. From my knowledge thus gained, I am firmly of the conviction that the Irish, by birth or descent, have contributed during the past two hundred years, and from every station in life, more in number, more brain work and muscle for the development of the country at large than has been furnished by every other nationality of the world combined. ”

“ We, as citizens of this great Republic, should study the history of our country from a patriotic standpoint, while as Irishmen, or descendants of that race, it should be not only a duty but a pleasure to learn of the deeds of Irishmen in America.
Therefore, an organization such as the American-Irish Historical Society, if it had no other raison d’être, would accomplish a patriotic purpose if it served only as an incentive to the study of the deeds of Irishmen in America. ”

“ To sift and discriminate every paper, sketch, document, bearing on the society’s line of work, before the same is accepted and given official sanction, in order that its publication may be a guarantee of historical accuracy; to do its work without passion or prejudice, to view accomplished facts in the true scientific historical spirit, and, having reached the truth, to give it to the world. ”

“ But it is not solely to chronicle the deeds of Irish ancestors, or their descendants, and our contemporaries that we have organized an historical society.
Ownership, or the right of possession, as well as pride of descent, tend to make one a better citizen. We, therefore, desire that as our young men grow up they may feel that they inherit the right of ownership in our great country ”

“ The crude ore lies in the mines of the hills all over the earth, potential in its possibilities, yet heavy, dull, inert, awaiting the day when man shall dig it from its hiding place, try it in the fires of the furnace, beat it on the anvil and transform it into the polished rail that ties together the ends of civilization, that will shape it into the massive engine that carries the fruits of industry and commerce to the uttermost parts of the world, that moulds it into the type and press that spreads intelligence and frees the soul, and that fashions it into the sword that frees the slave. ”

“ He may creep on into the centuries dull, heavy, oppressed, carrying the thrall of the master, content that he shall eat and drink and sleep in the peace of ignorance, content that his master shall do his thinking and fighting, heedless who the master is, for the hands of all are heavy; taking his religion and his lot from him who rules and starves him.
Others there are who have lived for centuries watching the tide of civilization and the higher life sweep by them, too hotly engaged in the struggle of life and death to snatch the prizes as they go by. ”

“ Until recent years little has been written of the coming of the so-called Scotch-Irish to America, and yet it is an event of scarcely less importance than the exodus of English Puritans to New England and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is impossible to understand the drift which American history, social and political, has taken since the time of Andrew Jackson, without studying the early life of the Scotch-Irish population of the Alleghany region, the pioneers of the American backwoods. ”

“ When these people began coming to America, those families that had been longest in Ireland had dwelt there but for three generations, and confusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclature which couples them with the true Irish. The antipathy between the Scotch-Irish as a group and the true Irish as a group is, perhaps, unsurpassed for bitterness and intensity. On the other hand, since love laughs at feuds and schisms, intermarriages between the Colonists of Ulster and the native Irish were by no means unusual, and instances occur of Murphys and McManuses of the Presbyterian faith. ”

“ It is of minor importance in what church they worshiped; we wish merely to concern ourselves with the work done by them here; to record the story of their settlement; to state the extent of their participation in the civil, military, and political activities of the land, and to try truthfully and fearlessly to record their achievements.
The society now in process of formation must, we believe, be made up of men who have the patience to search, the knowledge and wisdom to sift and discriminate, and the ability to place the results in acceptable literary form. ”

“ The transformation of bogs and fens into gardens is merely a fairy story; the bogs and fens are in Ulster to-day. The fertile valleys of Ulster, ready to be entered on, were the bait to catch settlers, for the defeated and disheartened native Irish had been driven to the barren hills and bogs. Men as a rule don’t risk life and fortune for the privilege of transforming bogs into gardens in a hostile country; and, moreover, Motley says England and Scotland in that age had the rudest system of agriculture in Europe. ”

“ In the days to come, that lie in the womb of the future, when all the various elements that have gone and are going to make the republic great, are united in the American,—the man who in his person will represent the bravest elements of all the old races of earth,—we desire that the deeds and accomplishments of our element shall be written in the book of the new race, telling what we did and no more; giving us our rightful place by the side of the others. ”

“ He is a decidedly unsafe man to educate a coming generation of Americans, for the writer of solemn and dogmatic nonsense is unfit to train the American youth. Certainly no self-respecting man of Irish-Celtic blood should permit his children to attend a university where they are taught that the perpetrators of ages of outrage and wrong are divinely selected beings, chosen “to assume leadership in the establishment and administration of States.” ”

“ To place the Irish element in its true light in American history, to secure its correct perspective in relation to historic events on this soil, is the final aim of the new society. Its primal object will be to ascertain the facts, weigh them in relation to contemporary events, and estimate their historical value, avoiding in this process the exaggeration and extravagance of poorly informed writers on the one hand and the prejudice and misrepresentation of hostile writers on the other. ”

“ The advent of a strong conqueror—a mixed Celt and Norseman—changed all this, hammered England into a strong military kingdom, connected her with the civilization that has made the world what it is—the Latin—and did in six years what the pure Teutonic race had signally failed to do in as many centuries.
Prior to the historic event known as the Reformation, Germany had as much peace as her neighbors—which wasn’t much—and all she had she owed to her intercourse with the Latin South, to her touch with the civilization and religion of Rome. ”

“ Joseph Smith, secretary of the Lowell Police Board, urged work on the part of every member. “We cannot deal in hurrah business,” he said. “We must produce the cold documents and facts that no one can dispute, and eliminate from history its imaginary and fictitious bluffs. All must work in investigation in their own towns and vicinity. We must organize in every town and city, and every year have a meeting of this parent society to garner and publish our discovered and compiled facts. ”