This recently published book is an interesting read. Nominally, it is about the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia but in reality it is a summary of where America was politically and socially in 1876 and along with the presidential election of that year it details shortcomings in the US as it related to blacks, native Americans and immigrant laborers.
The politics of the day were fearsome, in their intensity, division and in their use of violence and the threat of further violence. It bears lessons and comparison to our own times. For Black Americans, a politically resurgent south was putting the finishing touches on reconstruction and starting the century long disenfranchisement. For native Americans, the victory of the Little Big Horn was to lead to their destruction and confinement in reservations and for organized labor, the prosecution of the Molly Maguires was just the first in a series of federal and state actions that suppressed labor activism in America.
From an Irish perspective, this author presents the prosecution as more of a social and cultural movement in the American northeast against Irish lawlessness and the AOH in particular. He also implies an anti-Catholic bias, that I would disagree with. There was some anti-Catholic bias in the 1850s and the Know-Nothing era, but by the 1870s, the Catholic establishment was vigorous in its condemnation of the Mollies and the AOH (Archbishop Wood in Philadelphia excommunicated members of the AOH) and was already looking for suitable alternatives for Catholic men. It founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882.
A moral icon of the times, Rev Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, was a staunch abolitionist in the 1850s, but in the 1870s he was staunchly pro business and anti-union. He defended the businesses who reduced workers wages during the depression, said a man should support his wife and children on a wage of a dollar a day and any type of government welfare was ‘un-American’. The average Irish laborer would indeed have reason to be suspicious of such elites.
But it is also notable that the Irish, in the years that followed, did much better that Black Americans and especially native Americans who are still dealing with the after effects of that era.
An excellent discourse.
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