"How the heroic Irish won the American Revolution" Topic

…remembered this Patriot's Day

"George Washington Park Custis, Washington's adopted son and a careful student of history, placed the significant Irish contribution to the American revolution in a proper historical perspective:

"When our friendless standard was first unfurled for resistance, who were strangers [foreigners] that first mustered ‘round its staff when it reeled in the fight, who more bravely sustained it than Erin's generous sons? Who led the assault on Quebec [General Montgomery] and shed early luster on our arms, in the dawn of our revolution? Who led the right wing of Liberty's forlorn hope [General Sullivan] at the passage of the Delaware [just before the attack on Trenton]? Who felt the privations of the camp, the fate of battle, or the horrors of the prison ship more keenly than the Irish? Washington loved them, for they were the companions of his toil, his perils, his glories, in the deliverance of his country."…"

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Amicalement
Armand

An interesting subject, although from a 'not-entirely-unbiased' source…

"above half [of the American Army consisted of] Irish and Scotch" [Scotch-Irish from Northern Ireland] soldiers"

Those 'Scotch' might just have been, well, you know, Scotch.

Moreover, re. the Gaelic-speaking rank and file, at that time 'Irish' was a common term for Scots Gaelic among the sassenach.

According to Wiki in the American war of impendence 16% 0f the rank and file and 31% of the officers of the British Army were Irish.

Scots, please. Scotch is an alcoholic beverage, Scots are people from Scotland.

Didn't we do this yesterday with Mexicans? Wake me when we get to Germans.

A number of things worth mention stand out in this article. It was mainly Irish Presbyterians from the Foyle Valley around Londonderry that emigrated to the Boston region in the early 1700s. The same Penal laws that constrained Catholics in Ireland applied to dissenting religions. So those Minute men and Continentals that fought the British were the relatives of the Irish Protestants of 1912 signing the Covenant and clinging to their British status. No Home Rule!
It is 1778 as part of a relaxation of the same Penal laws that allowed Irish Catholics officially join the British Army. This driven by a need for soldiers to fight in America.
A final point is that approx a third of the population of the British Isles in the 1750s was Irish. It is with the Famine of the 1840's that the population of Ireland plunges as that of Britain rises rapidly.

Kevin and Flanker, you're both right--and pretty much irrelevant. ALL the histories of this or that people run on the same program: you expand the definition of "your" people to include both geography and descent when they do something you approve of, but when they do something embarrassing or otherwise contrary to your concept of the good, you narrow the definition to exclude them, and omit the whole incident otherwise. So in this case, protestants of Scots descent fighting for the right side are Irish, where they wouldn't be in other contexts. And so yesterday's gleeful confusion of Spanish and Mexican whenever it was helpful. The "Afrocentrists" do the same thing--claiming Hannibal (probably of pure Phoenician descent) and Cleopatra (certainly of equally pure Greek/Macedonian) as "African" because they're born on the continent, while skipping Arab slave traders and Boers also so born and grabbing prominent persons of American and European birth purely on the basis of (sometimes fractional) descent.

I don't care what standard is used so long as the standard is consistent, but among the people who write such histories it never is.

And your point, if there actually is one, is…what?

I am not expanding or narrowing anything, thank you very much.

I am perfectly happy to be Scotch, with the whisky, in the mist.

Irish Central is one of the weirdest news sites on the web, being a sort of distillation of Irish affairs written by and on behalf of people from outside Ireland.

I'm sorry, Brechtel. Point is that in a world with more stuff than we can hope to read, almost everything devoted to telling how the author's sex, race or religion contributed disproportionately to whatever happy event may be safely skipped. Sorting wheat from chaff was tricky in the movable type era. In the cybernetic era, knowing what can be safely disregarded is the first step to learning.

I've seen this "lots of Irish" in the Continental Army before, and Mr. Piepenbrink makes good points.
"Irish" for people in the late 18th century meant anyone born in Ireland. Including descendants of the old Anglo-Norman gentry. Hence, why the '98 rebels were both Protestant and Catholic.
But those in the Continental Army were overwhelmingly
Protestant, usually Presbyterians. American born Presbyterians were also overwhelmingly patriots. Which is why the British either burned (Springfield) or defiled (Setauket) their churches.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Scots Irish, not Irish