Category Archives: Irish America

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Beginnings

Chicago journalist Ruth Russell reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919, followed by a year of activism for its independence. This five-part monograph is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. © 2022. This post was updated in October 2022 to add the “Easter Rising” section about Russell’s efforts to travel to Ireland in 1916, and other minor edits.  

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On Jan. 27, 1919, a Chicago Daily News editor urged the federal government to expedite a passport for one of his reporters, Ruth Russell. “Because of the news conditions in Ireland at the present time, it is hoped that she may leave as soon as possible,” News Editor Henry J. Smith wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing.[1]Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – … Continue reading

Six days earlier, the separatist Sinn Féin party declared independence from Britain and established a breakaway government in Dublin, a move based on its near sweep of Irish parliamentary seats in the United Kingdom’s first election after the Great War. In County Tipperary, 125 miles southwest of the Irish capital, two policemen were killed in an ambush, the first shots of Ireland’s latest uprising against centuries of British rule. 

Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

Washington officials approved Russell’s passport and Chicago editors assigned her to answer this question: “What’s the matter with Ireland?” Russell recalled later, “This was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with Ireland, gave me before I sailed for that bit of Europe which lies closest to America.”[2]Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”

Nearly a year to the day after Smith’s State Department outreach, another letter was written on Russell’s behalf. This time the author was Éamon de Valera, president of the provisional Irish republic. Russell interviewed him in March 1919, shortly after her arrival in Dublin. 

“I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint,” de Valera wrote in the Jan. 29, 1920, letter published as front matter in Russell’s new book, What’s the matter with Ireland?, based on her 1919 reporting. “I hope we shall have more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.”[3]Ibid., 9–10.

Russell’s reporting from Ireland at times was insightful and compassionate, especially her sketches of women, children, and workers living in the shadows of the revolution. It is debatable whether she remained an impartial investigator. Her experiences in Ireland transformed her into a pro-Irish activist. She left the Daily News; joined at least one Washington, D.C., protest against British rule in Ireland; and testified before an American commission exploring conditions in Ireland. Russell’s 1919 reporting was soon dated by rapidly evolving events in Ireland, and her activism was fleeting. By 1921, she withdrew from journalism and public attention. 

BEGINNINGS 

Ruth Marie Russell was born March 24, 1889, in Chicago, the eighth child of Martin J. Russell, a 43-year-old Chicago Times editorial writer, and 39-year-old Cecilia [nee Walsh]. Both parents were the offspring of pre-Great Famine Irish immigrants. The couple lived in Hyde Park, just a few blocks from St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, where their newborn was baptized April 21, 1889.[4]Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; … Continue reading A live-in cook and a household “servant” tended the family, which also included Russell’s paternal grandmother, 76-year-old Jane Lewis [nee Mulligan].[5]1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.

“Among my earliest recollections are long twilight hour discussions with my grandmother about early Chicago–she came here in 1835,” Russell recalled in a 1931 newspaper interview to promote her novel, Lake Front.[6]“Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.

In the book, about Chicago’s first 100 years, the 42-year-old Russell described her hometown in the 1890s of her youth: “It was an ugly city. Its lines were hard and sharp. Its color, smoke. Its air, gritty. Its noises, strident. Its smell, salt with the blood of slaughterhouses. Its people, pale and hurried.”[7]Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.

Postcard image of the Irish Village.

Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, developed near Russell’s Hyde Park neighborhood, included an Irish Village with a recreation of the Blarney Castle and white-washed, thatched-roof cottages. An organizer of the exhibit wrote that it would be a great mistake “if any who boast of Irish blood in their veins do not resort thither with their children in order to call to mind the stories told by parents of the scenes of their childhood, or muse over bygone days which they themselves can recall in the dear old home.”[8]Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.

During this period, Chicago’s 16 percent Irish-born population[9]Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census. read newspaper stories about the murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, a member of the city’s Irish nationalist underground, and the divorce case downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, Ireland’s “uncrowned king.” Irish immigrant Margaret F. Sullivan, who worked with Russell’s father at the Chicago Herald, wrote a popular book about the agrarian agitation in her native country.[10]Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. … Continue reading

In June 1900, when Russell was 11, her popular father died of kidney disease at age 54. “All the newspaper reading public recognized Mr. Russell as an editorial writer of learning, caliber, force, and judgement,” the Chicago Tribune quoted one of his friends.[11]“Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900. At St. Thomas the Apostle Church, the Rev. Daniel Riordan described the deceased as “a conspicuous example of scrupulous integrity.”[12]Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.

Russell attended nearby St. Xavier Academy, a Catholic girls school. Upon graduation in 1906, she enrolled at Chicago Normal College and for the next two years prepared for a teaching career.[13]Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. … Continue reading In September 1909, Russell matriculated into the University of Chicago, where she was joined by her younger sister, Cecilia, in the activities of the Esoteric, a woman’s social club, and the Brownson Club, a campus Catholic group.[14]Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132. Ruth graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.[15]Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.

Her activities over the next four years are less clear. In June 1914 Russell sailed to France to study in Grenoble, but hurried home with the outbreak of the Great War.[16]“Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and … Continue reading On her return, Russell might have helped manage the St. Mary’s Campfire Girls program on Chicago’s south side.[17]Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In … Continue reading She would soon become fascinated by events in Ireland

EASTER RISING

In April 1916 Irish separatists seized government buildings in Dublin in a bold strike for independence. The British military quickly crushed the insurrection, which became known as the Easter Rising, and executed the rebel leaders. These events moved the Irish in America, where Catholic churches and other groups organized efforts to provide relief to the people of Dublin. Russell gravitated to the effort.

In November, the U.S. State Department notified the British government of Russell’s desire to visit Ireland to help distribute relief. The American government said it did so “without expressing any opinion as to her qualification for such a mission.”[18]Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, … Continue reading The British Foreign Office observed internally that such individuals, “even when recommended by trustworthy organizations, have been unable to avoid reference to political controversaries on their return to the United States of a nature inflame public opinion.”[19]Ibid.

Within a week Britain’s Consul General in Chicago telegrammed the Foreign Office to report that Russell’s real intention was to act as a correspondent for The New World, weekly organ of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The consul described the newspaper as featuring “anti-English articles about Ireland.” My review of the New World‘s archives from April 1916 through 1917 did not find Russell’s byline or any mention or her work for Irish relief.

More provocatively, however, the Consul General’s correspondence said that Russell’s request to visit Ireland was “indefinitely postponed as she is suffering a nervous breakdown.”[20]Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926. This psychological evaluation seems dubious; more likely the sexist and patronizing language of male authorities, in the U.S. and Great Britain, during the period. A Dec. 26, 1916, follow-up correspondence from British Ambassador to the United States Cecil Spring Rice to Arthur Balfour, then beginning his tenure as foreign secretary, says that Russell was informed by Joseph P. Tumulty, private secretary to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, “that entrance to Ireland would not be possible at the present time and that she cannot therefore have a passport.”[21]Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.

It is extraordinary that Russell, then 27, drew attention from such high-ranking U.S. and British officials. But the episode, documented in Dublin Castle records, remains murky. I have not located any correspondence with Russell in the Tumulty or Lansing papers at the Library of Congress.[22]Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024. It is unclear whether the U.S. State Department knew of Russell’s 1916 denial when it approved her passport in 1919.

REPORTER

By October 1917, Russell “decided to enter the family field” and followed her late father and an older brother, James Russell, into the newspaper business.[23]”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29. She began working as a reporter at the Daily News. 

Chicago Daily News Building, 15 North Wells St., circa 1903. Chicago History Museum.

At the time of Russell’s newspaper debut, fast-growing Chicago was the second-largest city in America and “home to some of the most influential and dynamic journalists, editors, and newspaper owners in the United States.”[24]Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. … Continue reading Investigative efforts and literary styles flourished in the city’s newsrooms. Carl Sandburg joined the Daily News staff the same year as Russell and would bolster his reputation through coverage of Chicago’s 1919 race riots and profiles of the city’s African-American population.[25]Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight … Continue reading Russell was hired as a “special writer”[26]”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.,typically an ad hoc or freelance arrangement that was one of the best ways for women to enter the newsroom.[27]Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints … Continue reading

For two weeks in 1918, the 5-foot, 9-inch reporter[28]Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13. hauled heavy steel tools to shell turners inside a Chicago munitions factory for an undercover series about women in war work. She profiled the manual laborers, including “a big woman whose straggly blond hair was stuck to the side of her wide, flat face with perspiration” as she pushed a 200-pound load. The reporter strained and “blushed at my little loads.” Russell estimated that she “walked about four miles, trucked approximately 900 pounds of steel, shouldered less heavy tools and earned $2 in an eight-hour night.” At the end of the shift, “I threw myself on a restroom cot.”[29]“Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.

In addition to such domestic coverage, the Daily News aggressively pursued foreign news. Publisher Victor F. Lawson established bureaus in London, Paris, and Berlin “on the best sites in town, with big signs, to lure in Chicago tourists,” foreign correspondent Paul Scott Mowrer recalled.[30]Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964. But Lawson was interested in more than good publicity. In the paper’s handbook for foreign correspondents, he wrote: 

The key words of the service are significance and interpretation. Generally speaking, we aim to chronicle only what is significant, and we aim to show the significance of everything we chronicle … how and why it happened, and what it means. We have therefore to be clearer, more analytical, more thorough, less superficial, more cautious and generally more accurate, and perhaps more conscientious than our competitors.[31]Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.

Lawson advised his correspondents to stay close to the native people, report on their styles and customs, fads and fancies, including business, education, science, religion, art, sports, and social problems. As the United States entered the Great War, his reporters fanned across Europe, including poetess Eunice Tietjens, sent to cover the conflict “from a woman’s perspective.”[32]Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.

More than three dozen female journalists filed dispatches from the war in Europe for U.S. newspapers and magazines; more than doubling the number of women foreign correspondents since the Mexican-American War of the mid-19th century.[33]Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed. Russell joined this still-small and under-appreciated sorority soon after the armistice.

The revolution erupting in Ireland was a story of particular interest to Chicago readers. 

NEXT: Russell’s reporting from Ireland

 

References

References
↑1 Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – Certificates: 63000–63249, Accessed via Ancestry.com. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925.
↑2 Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”
↑3 Ibid., 9–10.
↑4 Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; FHL microfilm: 1240287; accessed via Ancestry.com; Baptismal record with address and mother’s maiden name accessed accessed via FindMyPast.com; and “New map of Chicago showing location of schools, streetcar lines in colors and street numbers in even hundreds,” Rufus Blanchard, 1897, accessed via The University of Chicago Map Collection.
↑5 1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.
↑6 “Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.
↑7 Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.
↑8 Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.
↑9 Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census.
↑10 Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. McCurdy & Co.: Chicago, 1881).
↑11 “Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900.
↑12 Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.
↑13 Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. Author appealed to the Public Access Counselor, Illinois Office of Attorney General, for review and prevailed in having the full record released.
↑14 Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132.
↑15 Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.
↑16 “Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” shows Russell left France Aug. 22, 1914, and arrived in New York on Aug. 30, 1914. Both via MyHerage.com.
↑17 Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In this paper, “Ruth Russell” is described as a downtown office clerk, but there is no further identification to confirm she is the subject of this paper.
↑18 Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, London, England. 1917 CO 904/184; Miscellaneous: Copies Of Correspondence Between The Foreign Office And The British Embassy In Washington: 3. Matters Relating To Foreign Affairs.
↑19 Ibid.
↑20 Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑21 Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑22 Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024.
↑23 ”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29.
↑24 Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. Kevin Rafter (Manchester University Press: New York, 2011), 123.
↑25 Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight (Newberry Library: Chicago, 1976).
↑26 ”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑27 Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints for Young Writers (Evanston Press Co.: Evanston, Ill., 1894.) 149.
↑28 Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑29 “Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.
↑30 Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964.
↑31 Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.
↑32 Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.
↑33 Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed.

Catching up with modern Ireland: November

November began with more than 1,000 people from the academic, arts, business, community, education, health, labor, law, media, and sports sectors; on both sides of the Irish border, and the diaspora in America, Canada, and Australia; signing an open letter calling for a “new conversation” about the constitutional future of the island of Ireland. The “Ireland’s Future” group urged Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to establish a citizens’ assembly to pave the way for a united Ireland. By the month’s end, Varadkar and opposition party leader Micheál Martin had rebuffed the request.

“In recent decades Irish nationalism has moved beyond slogans like ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’ into an appreciation that co-operation rather than conflict is a far better route to an agreed Ireland. Attempting to take advantage of the Brexit confusion to pursue a united Ireland is little more than a reworking of that tired old cliché,” Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins wrote.

Other News 

  • A new round of talks to reopen the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, dormant since January 2017, is scheduled for Dec. 16, four days after U.K. elections that will impact the fate of Brexit.
  • Results of four by-elections in the Republic of Ireland were still being determined as I publish. Turnout was low. A national election is expected before May.
  • The Republic launched a Rural Broadband Plan to address the lack of digital coverage in black spots that cover 80 percent of its land mass. Varadkar hailed the project as the “most important since rural electrification.”
  • U.S. President Donald Trump’s Doonbeg golf course reported a $1.7 million loss for 2018, the fifth-straight year the County Clare club has failed to make a profit, The Washington Post reported, citing Irish government filings. In October, the Clare County Council approved the Trump Organization’s request to build 53 homes on the site; but a request to build a rock barrier to shield the seaside resort from erosion remains pending with Ireland’s national planning board. 
  • Irish and U.K. media outlets have reported more anti-immigrant, alt-right activity in the Republic, which previously prided (or fooled) itself that it avoided the racism and xenophobia that plagues Europe and America.

Book News

  • Laying it on the Line – The Border and Brexit, a collection of 26 essays by “informed voices” (Only one woman!) from the Republic, Northern Ireland, the U.K., and the USA was released late in the month.
  • Caitríona Perry, RTÉ’s former Washington correspondent, published, The Tribe: The Inside Story of Irish Power and Influence in US Politics. My friend Felix M. Larkin’s review in The Irish Catholic.
  • Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland was selected for The Washington Post‘s “10 Best Books of 2019,” and The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2019.” It was not included in The Irish Times‘ “What Irish Writers are Reading” list.

NOTE: I’ll publish my seventh annual “Best of the Blog” near the end of December. The monthly roundup will resume in the new year. MH

From my morning walk through the Belfast Botanic Gardens in early November.

De Valera’s bad headline day in L.A.

On Nov. 19, 1919, a year and a week after the armistice ending World War I, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and American participation in the League of Nations. The same day, 2,670 miles west of Washington, D.C., Éamon de Valera was hammered by negative headlines in the Los Angeles Times as he arrived in the California city.

These seven headlines appeared below that day’s nameplate, taking half the available front page space:

Sims Denounces De Valera and Sinn Fein Plotters
Vice-Admiral William S. Sims, commander of the U.S. overseas fleet, said “this brotherhood is attempting to stir up hatred against our allies in the war.”

Irishman Near Collapse
“According to physicians, the Irish leader suffered a near-collapse that may necessitate his cancelling” other stops in California. Doctors in San Francisco had ordered de Valera to rest, but he pressed on to L.A.1

De Valera Unwelcome: Protest Against the Sinn Fein Leader by Societies Shows City’s Stand
“American Legion posts, church bodies and British societies have been particularly active in denouncing the Sinn Fein leader and have adopted resolutions declaring him a traitor to the cause of the Allies in the war and charging him with attempting to stir up enmity between the United States and England.”

San Diego Blow for De Valera
The city’s mayor said he would not greet the visitor on his next stop. “I am part Irish myself and he does not represent that part of me at all.”

Shriners Protest Use of Hall by De Valera
The philanthropic arm of the Masons cashed a rental deposit check from Irish supporters, then claimed they were unaware the event featured de Valera. Their change of mind appeared to be prompted by the Times’ amplified harangue against him.

Great Citrus Belt Hits Hard at Sinn Feiner
The Associated Chambers of Commerce of the San Gabriel Valley, representing 17 smaller towns, passed a resolution denouncing de Valera as a traitor.

No Music for Paraders: Pasadena and Long Beach Bands Refuse to Play for De Valera Today
The decision was driven in part by protests from a group of U.S. Civil War veterans, who compared de Valera and Sinn Fein to the Copperheads of the 1860s.

As Dave Hannigan explains:

The degree of vitriol directed toward de Valera can be traced to the publisher Harry Chandler, who a couple of months earlier had described his interest in the Versailles Treaty thus: “as far as the Los Angeles Times is concerned, the League [of Nations] is not our politics now but our religion.” Chandler obviously believed this Irishman was preaching a blasphemous doctrine against the League and had to be dealt with accordingly; not to mention that his visit was being sponsored, at least in part, by a rival paper, the Los Angeles Examiner.2

That night, the crowd gathered outside the Shrine Auditorium to see de Valera was prohibited from entering the building. The Irish leader, who gave a speech earlier in day at his hotel, avoided the scene and departed the next morning for San Diego, despite the expected snub by the city’s mayor.

De Valera before a Los Angeles crowd, a few days later than planned in November 1919.

Four days later, de Valera returned to Los Angeles for a rescheduled appearance at a minor league baseball stadium. The outdoor event drew a larger crowd than would have seen him at the indoor venue. The Times’ page 13 story described de Valera as “the mythical ‘president’ of a mythical Irish ‘republic.’ “3 The Irish Standard of Minneapolis, Minnesota, months earlier complained about the demeaning device of using quotes around the words such as president and republic.

The same day’s Times front page declared: “Sinn Fein Terrorist Rule Ireland With Hate“. The story by American correspondent George Seldes opened with this quote from a British military officer:

“Ireland is terrorized. It is seething with crime. Let me tell you one thing, it is no longer safe to go about in the King’s uniform.”

The generally negative portrait of Irish republican efforts nevertheless recognized the arrests and imprisonment without trial of members of Dáil Éireann. Seldes concluded: “Despite all this crime, a stranger in Ireland goes about freely and safely.”

Irish-American press reaction

Irish-American newspapers, though slowed by their weekly publication schedules and commitments to other news content, responded vehemently to the Times‘ L.A. coverage.

The Friends of Irish Freedom’s News Letter said the Times “certainly is more English than American” and had “done its utmost to stir up an un-American sentiment against” de Valera and the Irish Republic. “The American Newspaper Publishers Association, a body of sturdy Americans, might do well if it undertook a little Americanization work amidst its own ranks, for the benefit of its few anti-American members.”4  

The Irish Press of Philadelphia, with its direct links de Valera and the separatist government in Dublin, described the daily as “the best-known labor-hating and pro-British sheet in the west.” The Press continued:

The Times engaged for four weeks in the bitterest and most malignant campaign of misrepresentation and hatred that has been witnessed in this country in years. Lies–on several occasions six columns of them in one edition–were hurled at de Valera and the Irish people. Editorially and in news columns deliberately incited to mob violence.5

The Kentucky Irish American headlined “Notorious Sheet Exposed” (the Times) and noted the Hearst-owned Examiner “made a special fight in favor of a fair hearing and the other papers of that district were friendly to the lecture.”6

The Irish Standard barely mentioned the Times, except that “de Valera made only one reference to the newspaper which boasted of having prevented his appearance at the Shrine Auditorium, when he said, speaking of the Irish movement:

It is not racial, it is not religious. You are told it is religious. Now, it is very easy to see that it is not, and so difficult would it be to prove it religious that even the Los Angeles Times admits it is not a religious issue.7

The Gaelic American of New York City ignored the Times, but described the city’s negative reception in a brief story headlined: Los Angeles Bigots Show Their Ugly Fangs.8

De Valera and his supporters returned to New York from California, taking a short break from the coast-to-coast tour that began in June before tackling other problems. Hannigan writes:

By any standard of measurement, this extended cross-country jaunt was the most successful aspect of de Valera’s stay in America. In terms of raising awareness and drawing the attention of newspapers and the public alike, it was a fantastic achievement. For the duration of the tour and a good while after, coverage of all things Irish, especially in regional press, exploded.9

Back to Ireland for history conference talk

I am returning to Ireland–my tenth visit since 2000, my fifth since 2016–to make a presentation at the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland’s annual conference at Queens University Belfast. I am speaking about pioneering woman journalist Ruth Russell, who in 1919 reported on the early months of the Irish revolution for the Chicago Daily News. Watch for updates and tweets from @markaholan.

 

Catching up with modern Ireland: October

Brexit was supposed to happen by Oct. 31. It hasn’t. The departure deadline is now Jan. 31, 2020, but could happen sooner, depending on the outcome of a Dec. 12 election in the U.K., including 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland of 650 seats in the Commons. In the Republic, there are divergent opinions whether to call elections this month, or wait until May 2020.

More news and views:

  • Abortion was decriminalized and same-sex marriage legalized in Northern Ireland on Oct. 21 as the London parliament passed legislation while the Northern Ireland Assembly remains dormant.
  • It is hard to overstate how remarkable it is that the end of partition on the island of Ireland is being seriously considered, yet it is difficult to understate how ill-prepared everyone is for it to actually happen, Ed O’Loughlin wrote in the Atlantic: The ‘Messy and Angry’ Prospect of Ireland Reunifying
  • As if Brexit wasn’t confusing enough, an E.U. plan to eliminate daylight savings time in 2021 could put post-departure Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in different time zones, creating a new form of partition on the island.
  • Veteran IRA man Ivor Bell was acquitted of any involvement in the 1972 abduction, murder, and disappearance of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. The event is at the core of Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2019 book, Say Nothing.
  •  John Henry Newman, the founding rector/president of Ireland’s only Catholic university, precursor of University College Dublin (UCD), was canonized as a saint. UCD was criticized for originally saying it would not send a representative to Rome, citing its modern secular nature, a move some interpreted as anti-Catholic.
  • ” … few Irish Americans know any Irish history at all. … Ireland’s War of Independence need not be celebrated, but it should at least be remembered, above all by the Irish-American community,” John Rodden and John P. Rossi wrote in Commonweal: Why the Irish War of Independence Still Matters

Old buildings on a farm at Fairhead, County Antrim, August 2019.

Hyde’s ‘American Journey’ re-launched in D.C.

Irish language advocate and academic Douglas Hyde (1860-1949) in November 1905 began an eight-month tour of the United States to promote the Gaelic League, which he helped co-found in 1893. Money raised from the tour was used to hire and train additional Irish language teachers and organizers. The Gaelic League sustained a cultural revolution that nurtured the political sovereignty movement that erupted over the next two decades. 

My America Journey, Hyde’s collection of journal and diary entries, was first published in 1937 in Irish. Now, the University College Dublin Press has reissued the collection as a 362-page bilingual hardcover, which also contains newly discovered archival material, extensive illustrations, maps, and an introduction by Irish President Michael D. Higgins.

Daniel Mulhall

Hyde was “one of the most interesting and least known figures of late 19th and early 20th century Ireland,” Ambassador of Ireland to the United States Daniel Mulhall said during an Oct. 23 book launch at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Hyde’s 1892 National Literary Society lecture, “The Necessity of De-Anglicising the Irish Nation”, ranks as “the most important speech in Ireland in 150 years,” Mulhall said. It awakened the realization that the Irish were an ancient people with their own language and culture, “not a pale imitation of our neighbor.”

The Irish community Hyde encountered in America was “fiercely committed to the welfare of their ancestral homeland,” the ambassador continued. Hyde encouraged the connection to be sure the immigrants who had crossed the Atlantic also didn’t drift away in spirit. It was the beginning of American influence on Irish affairs that continued through the revolutionary period, the Troubles, and continues to this day.

“I have personally experienced that commitment in the context of Brexit,” Mulhall said.

I’ll have more on Hyde’s book in future posts. For now, here is a link to “Objects, Aims and Philosophy of the Gaelic League Set Forth in Address“, an announcement of Hyde’s tour from the Executive Committee of the Gaelic League as published on the Oct. 14, 1905, front page of the Kentucky Irish American newspaper.

Statue outside of the Douglas Hyde Interpretive Centre in his native County Roscommon, February 2018.

More opinions on the Irish question, October 1919

Ten months after the separatist Sinn Féin established the Dáil Éireann parliament in Dublin, and four months after Éamon de Valera arrived in America to raise money and political support for the Irish Republic, U.S. newspapers were packed with opinions about “the Irish question”. This is my second post of excerpts from by-lined columns that were published in October 1919. The first post featured three Irish writers.

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Howard

Wesley O. Howard (1863-1933) was an American lawyer and justice of the Third New York Judicial District Court when he wrote the piece below. As a member of the U.S. Republican Party, he was a political opponent of President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. In the post-war Treaty of Versailles, Article Ten was a provision that required members of the League of Nations to help each other if any came under attack. The U.S. Senate, which Wilson needed to ratify the treaty, worried the provision would draw America into more overseas wars similar to the one just ended. The Senate rejected the treaty a month after this article was published. 

The Shackles of Ireland–Erin and Article Ten, from The Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 12, 1919

…the great Powers of the earth are solemnly pledged under Article X of the League of Nations to send their armies, their navies and their resources to the shores of Erin to crush the hopes of the Irish people. And the American republic, with its millions of Irish blooded citizens, is to be urged to enter this compact for the obliteration of Ireland. The League of Nations should be known as the Magna Carta of Coercion.

The Irish people had hoped that President Wilson would stand as their champion at the peace table. His noble words gave the sons of Erin hope. … The Irish people thought that [Wilson’s words about] “the privileges of men everywhere to choose their way of life” included Ireland, but they were wrong. There is no privilege in Ireland under the League of Nations to choose anything. Their only privilege is the privilege of living “within the empire” and being the subject of a foreign prince.

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Whyte

Alexander Frederick Whyte (1883-1970) was a British civil servant, politician, and journalist. He was a founding editor of The New Europe: A Weekly Review of Foreign Politics. Use the linked title to read “How France Views the Irish Question” , November 1919, page 207; and “What Will Ulster Do?” , December 1919, page 302.) Whyte later headed the American division of the British Ministry of Information in the Second World War.

On the Road to Peace For Ireland, from the Christian Science Monitor10

Ireland is once more becoming the storm center of British politics. Even the turmoil of industrial disputes cannot drown the insistent, clamorous demand for a settlement of the Irish problem … The Irish question is the Achilles’ heel of the British commonwealth. It disturbs the normal development of politics in the United Kingdom; it distracts the energy of Irishmen from their proper task of exploiting the resources of their own rich island; it poisons the relations of Britain and America; and if it is not settled quickly it may result in yet worse consequences.

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Sir John Foster Fraser (1868-1936) was a Scottish journalist, travel writer and publicist. He is best known for an 1896 three-continent, 17-country, 19,237-mile bicycle trip around the world with two friends, documented in the book Round the World on a Wheel. He was knighted two years before writing this piece for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, which is considered the first U.S.-based distribution network for American and British writers. 

Ireland From an Englishman’s Point of View, from the McClure Newspaper Syndicate11

No Briton can travel throughout the United States without being conscious that in the mind of a vast section of the American people there is much more than an impression England stifles the aspirations of the Irish race. Those Americans, loving freedom, do not hesitate to declare there is something radically wrong. At the same time it must seem strange, almost contradictory, that England, which has been the most successful colonizer in the world, should be so unsuccessful in regard to governing Ireland. …

The majority of the people of Ireland, 70 percent, demand self-determination. When self-determination is being given to a number of small peoples in central Europe, why should it not be given to Ireland? The people of the British Isles are not averse from Ireland managing its own domestic affairs. The Home Rule Act was passed by the late Parliament. Then why is it not in operation?

[This article is] a polite hint that the fault is not at the doors of the English and that there would be no Irish question if Irishmen themselves were of one mind and did not threaten rebellion whether Ireland has self-determination or whether it has not. It is not true that Ireland of today is badly treated. Ireland is better treated than either England or Scotland. … The great thing is to try to understand the other point of view, not exaggerate, not to misrepresent and to remember that if England is sometimes stern and thinks of her own interests it is because she recalls the friendliness of so many Irish patriots toward the German cause during recent years.

See more post in my American Reporting of Irish Independence series, including a similar opinion roundup from April 1919.

Three Irish writers on the Irish question, October 1919

Ten months after the separatist Sinn Féin established the Dáil Éireann parliament in Dublin, and four months after Éamon de Valera arrived in America to raise money and political support for the Irish Republic, U.S. newspapers were packed with opinions about “the Irish question”. Below are short biographies of three native Irish writers and excerpts from columns they had published in October 1919.

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Harris

Frank Harris (1855-1931) was born in Galway and emigrated to America in 1869, age 13. He worked odd jobs and eventually moved west and earned a law degree. Harris returned to Europe and began his journalism career as a correspondent for U.S. newspapers before settling in London, where he worked at several publications. He began to write novels in the early 20th century; returned to America at the outbreak of the Great War; and became the editor at Pearson’s, a left-leaning monthly featuring fiction and arts and political coverage. In 1917, he wrote an essay “An Englishman on Ireland”. The column below was originally published in Pearson’s (linked) and syndicated to U.S. newspapers in October 1919. Two years later, Harris wrote another essay, “The Reign of Terror in Ireland”, and also became an American citizen.

How England Robs Ireland, from Pearson’s magazine

If I have fought for the ‘underdog’ all my life, and have championed lost causes continually without hope of success; if, as Bernard Shaw says, I have been wise by dint of pity, it is partly because in Ireland pity is a religion and the general atmosphere is softer and more affectionate than in any country I know, with the possible exception of Russia. … I can live in England with pleasure; I couldn’t live in Ireland or face Irish life for a year; it is too poor and drab. … Yet I am a Sinn Feiner and want to see an Irish republic, though twenty years ago I should have been satisfied with Home Rule; for I know that England is incapable of justice to Ireland … When (Ireland) appeals to kith and in in America she is insulted … America deserts you! or rather Mr. Wilson!”

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Desmond

Shaw Desmond (1877-1960) was born in County Waterford. An early (possibly first) novel, “Democracy”, was published in 1919. In a review, American author Upton Sinclair wrote “the work is deeply felt and intensely sincere.”12 Desmond went on to write more than 60 books, many of them about psychic phenomena, the occult, and spiritualism.

U.S. Converting Englishmen to Irish Freedom, from the New York Herald, Oct. 12, 1919

This is Ireland’s hour. There is not an Irishman throughout the world who does not feel it. England herself is feeling it. … In the twilight of the gods that to-day broods over Ireland the Irishman, whether Ulsterman or Southerner feels it. It is a feeling that rises above economic contentions, above policy, above reason itself. …

[Conservatives in Parliament] are astonished to find that Americans without distinction are ardent “Irishmen” whether they have Irish blood or not. When they hear of the Sinn Fein colors being carried down Fifth Avenue by New York regiments who are as anti-German as any Conservative among them they think it a horrible dream. To them it is as insoluble as so many other things American.

Ireland has put out the Sinn Fein constructive programme, which a prominent American lawyer told me the other day could be taken to any bank in Wall Street and money raised on it. Behind that programme is the brain of the movement–Arthur Griffith–for de Valera is only the inspirer. … I believe that Griffith and de Valera … feeling that the hour, which, if allowed to pass, may not return, has come, the psychological moment when Ireland has the ear of the world, are determined to put all on a throw of the dice. … We believe that English democracy has been educated to the point which has rendered Ireland’s self-government assured; that a way can be found out of the Ulster impasse; and that a little more patience will see the full fruition of Ireland’s hopes.

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MacManus

Seumas MacManus (1867-1960) was born in Mountcharles, County Donegal. The author, dramatist, and poet began writing for U.S. publications in the 1890s, including a 1907 piece for the North American Review, “Sinn Fein“: “Very quietly and silently, during the past decade, a change has been coming over the face of things political in Ireland … one of the greatest, most revolutionizing, that Ireland has known for a century…”  In 1917, he published Ireland’s Cause. His book Lo, And Behold Ye!, “of kings and peasants, of saints and sinners, of fairies and others of the tribes of little folk in a maze of bewitching Irishry”13 was making its U.S. debut at the time this column was published.

Forces Opposed to Sinn Fein in Ireland Are in State of Collapse, from The Catholic Advance (Wichita, Kansas), Oct. 25, 1919

Ireland is the land of pilgrims. And the season just ended together with the year 1918 have been far and away the most wonderful pilgrimage seasons Ireland has known since the Middle Ages. The 1918 threatened conscription–Irishmen fighting under England’s flag–made wonderful impetus for the pilgrimage movement, and hundreds of thousands journeyed in prayer and penance to their favorite holy places. …

The most significant sign of the times in Ireland is the fact that the Freeman’s Journal, the oldest newspaper in Ireland and a newspaper that for long years had carried by far the greatest sway in Ireland, has just gone under and disappeared.14 While Sinn Fein was growing the Freeman’s Journal was prone to libel the character of the movement and the men. This was done only to prevent the virile new movement from indecently hurrying the demise of the played out [Irish Parliamentary Party, which supported late 19th century home rule.]

See more post in my American Reporting of Irish Independence series, including a similar opinion roundup from April 1919.

Irish Network USA gathers in DC

Irish Network USA holds its annual national conference Oct. 10-13 in Washington, D.C.

Irish Ambassador to the United States Dan Mulhall opens the event with an Oct. 10 reception at the Irish Embassy. He will be interviewed the following day on the state of Irish-US relations “in times of change” and what Brexit means for transatlantic ties.

Sean Davis, Enterprise Ireland; Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Ireland; and Seamus Carroll, IDA Ireland, & TBC, Invest Northern Ireland will discuss Ireland’s trade, investment and tourism relations with the US, what Brexit might mean for those relations, and the role of IN chapters in advancing economic objectives in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Another session will review the new diaspora policy the Irish government plans to publish in 2020 as part of its commitment to double Ireland’s global impact by 2025.

Irish Network USA is the national umbrella organization of 19 Irish Networks chapters in cities across America. Its more than 3,500 members connect with their peers and to develop relationships that will foster success in their business, economic, cultural and sports ventures, and bolster business opportunities and economic development between America and Ireland.

Éamon de Valera’s October 1919 visit to Pittsburgh

This post fits two ongoing series: “American Reporting of Irish Independence” and “Pittsburgh Irish.” Check out my earlier stories from each link. MH

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De Valera in 1919

Éamon de Valera had been touring America for three months when reports of his upcoming stop in Pittsburgh appeared in the city’s newspapers. The Sept. 18 Post-Gazette announced a Sept. 26 visit, but the next day told readers “no date has been set.” On Sept. 28, the newspaper reported the Irish leader would arrive in the city on Oct. 3. 

The Daily Post announced the itinerary:

Upon his arrival Friday evening he will be escorted to the William Penn Hotel by prominent friends of Irish freedom. After dinner he will attend a meeting of representatives of the Irish American societies of Western Pennsylvania in the ballroom … Admission to this meeting will be by card. On Saturday he will attend exercises at Duquesne University, where he will have conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. On Saturday evening he will address two meetings, on at the Syria Mosque and the other at Memorial hall. … While de Valera is speaking in one hall the meeting in the other will be addressed by either Frank P. Walsh, former chairman of the war labor board and now chairman of the American commission on Irish independence, or by Harry J. Boland, secretary of the Sinn Fein organization in Ireland.15

This event would cap more than a year of large, passionate public meetings in the city focused on Irish independence. In May 1918, Pittsburgh’s Irish community protested British military conscription in Ireland, six months before the end of the Great War. In December 1918, they rallied again to support Ireland’s cause at the post-war Paris peace conference. In June 1919, a “record-breaking crowd” of 5,000 gathered for a “non-denominational self-determination mass meeting where speakers discussed the claims of Ireland to conduct its own affairs without interference.”16

Domestic Opposition 

The same edition of the Daily Post that published de Valera’s Pittsburgh itinerary also reported on “Ulster Day” in the city, a seventh anniversary commemoration of the Ulster Covenant against home rule in Ireland. North of Ireland Protestants opposed this milder form of political autonomy before the war; now they disparaged the independent government sought by de Valera and the republican Sinn Féin party.

The Ulster Society of Pittsburgh gathered at the Smithfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where Rev. E. M. McFadden preached on the history of “Ulsterites in Ireland.” It is unclear from newspaper accounts whether McFadden mentioned de Valera’s upcoming visit, only that he orated about how the spirit of prior generations of Ulstermen “finds a parallel in the accentuating motives that dominate the minds of their descendants in their continuation of the fight today.”17 

Two month earlier, McFadden organized a resolution inviting unionist leader Sir Edward Carson to the United States to “offset the propaganda for Irish independence.”18 In December, McFadden traveled to New York City to meet the visiting delegation of Protestant clergy, sans Carson, from Ulster.19

Secular opposition to de Valera also mounted the week of his Pittsburgh visit. In Harrisburg, 200 miles to the east, the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Legion passed a resolution that declared New York City-born de Valera “was an American and should have served in the army of navy and that he should not be accepted or recognized by any city of the United States.” The patriotic veterans organization, chartered by Congress a month earlier, adopted the motion to considerable cheering, despite attempts to speak against it.20

His Arrival

De Valera reached Pittsburgh’s Union Station about 8 p.m. Oct. 3, more than an hour late. Such evening arrivals were by design, “so as to facilitate demonstrations” that working people could not attend during the day.21 Boland and Walsh accompanied de Valera, as advanced, and they were cheered by a crowd of about 5,000. Two columns of uniformed veterans and cadets flanked the path to 100 waiting automobiles, but “it was almost impossible for police to clear a passageway” for the motorcade to make the half-mile trip to the William Penn Hotel.22

In two speeches the following evening, de Valera compared Ireland to the 13 American colonies.

We ask but one thing for ourselves–freedom. We have no fight with Great Britain on other subjects. Let us govern ourselves as we see fit, have some say in the making of laws which we must obey, and Ireland will rise among the great nations of the world, a credit to the land that gave us freedom.23

The Daily Post reported that de Valera was “warmly greeted by thousands of Irish sympathizers” who lined up for blocks an hour before the speech and filled the overflow hall. Their “wildly enthusiastic demonstrations testif[ied] to the popularity of the cause.”24 The newspaper reports do not mention any counter protests.

The Irish Press, a Philadelphia weekly with direct ties to the Sinn Féin government in Ireland, devoted its Oct. 9 issue to de Valera’s two-day visit to that city prior to his Pittsburgh stop. The Pittsburgh coverage appeared a week later and emphasized the two halls needed to accommodate “the great crowd … overwhelmed with joy, many standing on their seats and all cheering and applauding several minutes” upon his arrival.25

Undated photo of the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. The building opened in 1916, three years before de Valera’s visit. It was demolished in 1991.

The nationalist weekly also reported the comments of Alexander P. Moore, publisher of the Pittsburgh Leader newspaper and one of the event co-chairmen. Unsurprisingly, the city’s other dailies were silent about the comments of the rival publisher. Moore downplayed the religious divide in Ireland.

“I am a living denial of the statement that the Irish cause is a religious question,” he said. “I am the son of an Ulster Protestant whose father was driven out of Ireland because he fought for Irish freedom.”26 

Return Visits

Before his Pittsburgh speeches, De Valera made a brief visit to Duquesne University, but he was unable to attend the announced ceremony due to a schedule “misunderstanding.”27 He returned to Pittsburgh eight months later to give an address and accept the honorary degree from the Catholic college.28

This second visit came shortly after de Valera’s failure to convince the U.S. Republican Party to adopt a pro-Irish plank at its national convention in Chicago, and before a similar effort fell short at the Democratic convention in San Francisco. Animosity deepened between factions of Irish America. Some U.S. newspapers reported de Valera had “outstayed his welcome in the United States” and was about to leave America.29 In Pittsburgh, de Valera told reporters: “I will not leave this county until I am definitely recalled by the Irish parliament or deported.”30 He remained in America until December 1920.

De Valera’s reception at the Catholic university was warmed by a special connection to Ireland:

The University thus honours him not merely in consideration of this scholarship, which is widely acknowledged, not merely out of sympathy with the cause which he represents, but also as a tribute to one who has attained eminence and has been associated both as pupil and teacher with a sister college, namely, Blackrock College in Dublin.31

De Valera returned to Pittsburgh in March 1930, then an out-of-power leader of the opposition Fianna Fáil political party and chancellor of the National University of Ireland. He was in the United States to raise money for a newspaper venture, The Irish Press, which a year later would begin to publish in Dublin. The same-name Philadelphia paper that reported his 1919 U.S. visit ceased publication in 1922.

De Valera’s 1920 and 1930 trips to Pittsburgh didn’t generate nearly as much excitement or press coverage as in October 1919. The 1930 visit came within a decade of the war-ending treaty that created the 26-county Irish Free State, shy of the republic de Valera and his supporters had sought in 1919. Six counties in Ulster were partitioned as Northern Ireland and remained part of Great Britain. A bloody civil war divided the Irish in the south. 

“Irish Americans became utterly disillusioned” by the two-year civil war and “enthusiasm for the nationalist movement in Ireland dissipated.32 In America, as in Ireland, many would blame de Valera for the division that lingered for decades to come.

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In addition to cited newspapers, these books also were consulted:

  • Dolan, James P., The Irish Americans: A History. Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2008.
  • Hannigan, Dave, De Valera in America: The Rebel President and the Making of Irish Independence. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010.
  • McCartan, Patrick, With De Valera In America. Brentano, New York, 1932.
  • McCullagh, David, De Valera, Rise 1882-1932. Gill Books, New York, 2017.
  • O’Doherty, Katherine, Assignment America: De Valera’s Mission to the United States. De Tanko Publishers, New York, 1957.
  • O’Neil, Gerard F., Pittsburgh Irish: Erin on the Three Rivers. The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2015.