RED, WHITE, BLUE AND GREEN

“Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days...accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth.” George Washington 

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside.” James Joyce 

It was the common Irish foot soldier, used to fighting to survive, used to fighting England, who was the difference between victory and defeat for George Washington’s Continental Army and the American Revolution. 

It’s estimated that as many as half of the soldiers who fought for American Independence were born in Ireland or of Irish descent.

During the darkest days of the War of Independence in late 1776, General Washington lost thousands of soldiers who chose not to reenlist after they served a tour of duty. Some men from Massachusetts decided they could put their skills as seamen to use and make more money as patriotic privateers (“pirates with papers”) harassing ships of the British Navy sailing to America from Cork with soldiers and supplies to defeat the colonists. “Summer soldiers and sunshine patriots,” Thomas Paine memorably described those who left the front lines. 

Thomas Paine’s writing was instrumental in firing up Revolutionary War troops. But many Irish soldiers could read only their native language.

Sure, there were immigrant Irishmen and their sons in the Continental Army who decided they’d had enough by December of 1776 and quit, but those New Englanders portrayed by friendly historians as the backbone of the American rebellion, were more likely to leave than the Irish. Reportedly, 10,000 troops “left for the sea, a gap filled by Irish landlubbers who had no maritime tradition as ‘the Irish are not a seafaring people,’” writes historian Phillip Thomas Tucker, author of How the Irish Won the Revolutionary War.

WHAT KIND OF IRISH?

There will always be those who wonder how many of the “Irish” who helped the colonists send the British troops packing in November 1783 were “Irish Irish” - descendants of the native Irish who were Catholic - and how many were “Scotch Irish” - descendants of those sent from Scotland to the north of Ireland who were Presbyterians.  

The Irish emigres from Ulster made up the bulk of troops in the Southern colonies.

As far as those already in America were concerned, if you sailed to the colonies from an Irish port (Derry, Belfast or Cork) and spoke Gaelic with a brogue YOU WERE IRISH! The term Scotch Irish didn’t even exist until the 1840s when it was used to distinguish the famine Irish from non-Catholic Ulsterites.  

Look at the numbers and decide if the Irish presence in the Continental Army was the decisive factor in getting rid of the British. One half of the men who fought in George Washington’s Continental Army arrived from one of those Irish ports or was the son of one who did. One quarter were native born Americans. One quarter were soldiers born in Scotland or England who decided to abandon King and country and be an American. 

In 1775, in what was to become the United States of America, in a population of 2 million, 400,000 were either born in Ireland or descendants of same. Of those, half were non-native Scottish from Ulster and the other half were native Irish from the other three provinces, Munster, Connaught and Leinster. With that high a percentage of the total population in this country, America was never more Irish than in the 1770s. 

Thousands of Irish paid the ultimate price in the Revolutionary War. Historians estimate that 24,000 Colonial troops died between 1775 and 1783. With another 25,000 wounded. That would put the number of Sons of Erin who never returned from battle at more than 10,000 with 12,000 returning wounded. 

And yet. “The avg enlisted man from Ireland has been forgotten,” argues Tucker in his book.

FORGOTTEN HEROES

“The role of the Irish has often been left out of the history books. No chapter of America’s story has been more thoroughly dominated by myths and romance than the nation’s desperate struggle for life during the American Revolution.  Unfortunately, America’s much-celebrated creation story has presented a sanitized version of events.” 

There is no doubt in Professor Tucker’s mind as to why the Irish are the forgotten heroes of the Revolutionary War: East Coast bias. He contends the historical establishment in America has been dominated by Protestant historians. “They transformed these historical developments into a righteous, moral crusade of God's chosen people, who were not Irish and definitely not Irish Catholics, in America's Protestant eyes to conform with self-serving racial, cultural, religious, and national priorities.” In other words, to acknowledge the decisive role of the Irish in our quest for Independence is to depart form the accepted, establishment narrative. 

“ Any serious consideration of meaningful Irish contributions to America's creation story was almost entirely incomprehensible as it would have diminished a much-celebrated American exceptionalism and nationalism,” writes Tucker. 

SO MANY SPOKE IRISH

Various forms of Gaelic (or Gaelige to be precise) could be heard spoken among the many Irish troops.

Any doubts about the huge role Irish speakers played in defeating England shrink in the face of testimony like that of Lord Mountjoy to Parliament in 1784, “America was lost by Irish emigrants … I am assured from the best authority, the major part of the American Army was composed of Irish and that the Irish language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as English. I am also informed it was their valor that determined the contest.” To this day it is written that many of the fighting Irish troops were illiterate. Not true. They spoke, wrote and read the Irish language just fine. 

ALLIES IN AMERICA BEFORE THEY WERE ENEMIES

It’s a little bit amazing that there isn’t a better historical record of the way Catholics and Presbyterians (who were dissenting Protestants, thus virulently opposed to the Anglican Church of England) fought against a common enemy in America. No one hated the English more than the Irish – Catholic and Presbyterian. Sadly, it wouldn’t be long before the Irish of Scottish descent formed Orange Lodges to fight Irish immigrants and the legal immigration of Catholics to America. 

The historical record may favor the New England school of thought – that it was the upstanding Protestant yeoman farmer/soldiers who defeated the redcoats. But there have been plenty of historians who dispute the record left behind by Henry Cabot Lodge in 1898. He wrote definitively that “Colonists who fought were almost of pure English blood,” and , “at Bunker Hill there was a sprinkling of Scotch-Irish.” Actually, 150 Sons of Erin fought with the minutemen at Lexington and Concord; 22 were killed in action.  

NOT A LODGE IN THE BUNCH

Look at the surnames of those who fought for America’s independence and you’ll see the “Irish factor.”

One historian who recognized the Irish effort for American independence was, not surprisingly, an Irishman and onetime head of the Irish Historical Association. The head of the American Historical Association, Thomas Fleming, praised Michael J. O’Brien of Ireland. He wrote, “O’Brien declared that in 1775 every man who came from Ireland was Irish.  It didn’t matter whether he was Protestant or Catholic.  They all had scores to settle with the British for centuries of exploitation and abuse.” 

Fleming went on, “O’Brien scoured the records of all the Massachusetts regiments who fought in the entire Revolutionary War.  He found over 3,000 unmistakably Irish names.  And guess what else?” 

“What?” 

“Not a single Lodge.” 

It is said that history is written by the victors. (Churchill didn’t say it but repeated it and was given credit for it.) That being the case with our Revolutionary War, the victors managed to withhold credit from the Irish who made the victory possible. Some have blamed this exclusion on the lack of written records of Irish military accomplishments. Others ask with skepticism, how hard were they looking? 

When Tucker wrote of this collective historical amnesia on Irish Central.com, one reader with first-hand knowledge of a primary source posted this last year: My surname is Harrington and my original ancestor came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 as an indentured slave. He died in 1707 as a wealthy man. But his biggest contribution would come after his death. He had descendants who made up nine of the 77 men who stood on the Green in Lexington on April 19th 1775. And the highest percentage of ethnicity of the men who fought for our independence were of Irish descent or Irish immigrants. Yes and I have always said about my family we did not just participate in the American Revolution heck we started it!