The Declaration Around the World: Ireland

By Dr. William E. Watson 

This essay is part of a content series exploring the nations, stories, and themes included in the Museum’s special exhibition The Declaration’s Journey, presented by Griffin Catalyst, on view through Jan. 3, 2027. Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Well-to-do Irish immigrants in Philadelphia and in other East Coast American cities founded mutual assistance organizations to help indigent, newly arrived Irish immigrants in the second half of the 18th century. In Philadelphia, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick (today, the Friendly Sons and Daughters of St. Patrick) was founded on March 17, 1771 at Miller’s Tavern.

Many of its founding members participated in the American Revolution. County Wexford-born Captain John Barry (1745-1803) was made Commander of Ships of the nascent Continental Navy. Stephen Moylan (1737-1811), born in Cork, was the Second Quartermaster General of the Continental Army. He also served as George Washington’s personal secretary, the Commander of the 4th Continental Light Dragoons, and Commander of the Continental Cavalry. He is credited as being the first person to use the phrase “United States of America” in 1776. The first public reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence was made on July 8, 1776 by financier John Nixon (1733-1808), whose father was from County Wexford. Thomas Fitzsimmons (1741-1811), whose birthplace in Ireland is unknown, was a delegate to the Continental Congress and was one of only two Catholic signers of the U.S. Constitution.  

Ireland was under English rule since the Anglo-Norman invasions of 1169-1171 and had suffered from repressive colonial policies outlined in the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366, which denigrated native Irish language, law, and culture, as well as outlawed cross-cultural contact between native Irish and English settlers. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century added the element of religious repression to English rule in Ireland. Restrictions on religious, economic, and political rights of the Catholic majority were imposed on the Irish population. The Poor Laws undermined traditional poor relief undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church.   

For the next several centuries the Irish Catholic majority looked abroad for help in their unsuccessful efforts to push off the rule of Great Britain. Spain provided military assistance in the Nine Years’ War in 1594-1603. France provided assistance to the pan-Catholic army of King James II in the Jacobite-Williamite War of 1690 fought in Ireland, and revolutionary France promised support to Theobald Wolfe Tone and the non-sectarian United Irishmen revolt of 1798, even commissioning Tone as an officer in the French army. Imperial Germany’s pledge of military aid for the Easter Rising in 1916 was intercepted before it arrived. Irish Americans provided a great deal of material support in both the successful Irish War of Independence in 1919-1921, and also in the form of NORAID (Northern Irish Aid) during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, circa 1969-1998. 

In 1795, Tone (1763-1798) met with President George Washington in Philadelphia, but was unsuccessful in obtaining a pledge of aid for the ill-fated United Irishmen revolt of 1798. Tone believed that Washington’s demeanor was too aristocratic and that he was uninterested in the Irish cause. Washington, however, had gladly accepted an honorary membership from the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia in 1782.  In the Act of Union in 1801, the Irish Parliament was absorbed into the British parliament, but Catholics were deprived of the vote until 1829 when Daniel O’Connell (“the Liberator”) secured Catholic political emancipation.   

Economic reform to help poorer Irish Catholic tenant farmers, however, would not occur until the last few decades of the nineteenth century. The Great Hunger in Ireland from 1845-1849 (an Gorta Mór in Irish) provided the context for the emergence of the Young Ireland revolutionary movement. One of its leaders, Thomas F. Meagher (1823-1867) was exiled to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) by the British, but escaped to the United States in 1852, and subsequently raised the Irish Brigade of the Union Army of the Potomac from among the Irish immigrants fleeing the famine. While the Union forces benefitted from the fighting capacity of Irish immigrant soldiers during the American Civil War (1861-1865), the American government condemned the subsequent Fenian invasions of Canada, undertaken by Irish immigrant Union veterans of the Civil War in an effort to bargain with the British government for an independent Ireland. 

One of the leaders of the Irish Land League, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) visited the U.S. in 1880 to raise significant funds for Irish Land League from Irish-American societies such as Clan na Gael and the Ancient Order of Hibernians for the cause of impoverished (mostly Catholic) Irish tenant farmers. After that time, several groups of armed revolutionaries emerged to try to secure Home Rule for Ireland, a development that Ulster Protestants such as Sir Edward Carson (1854- 1935) and his paramilitary army, the Ulster Volunteer Force, opposed. These independence-minded Irish revolutionaries included the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Citizen Army, and the Irish Volunteers. 

The Easter Rising against British rule occurred in Dublin during World War I (April 24-29, 1916) and sought assistance from Imperial Germany. The rebels published the Easter Proclamation, which asserted the independence of Ireland “supported by her exiled children in America.” With insufficient numbers of armed rebels mustered, the revolt ended in failure and 16 of its leaders were executed by British crown forces (including Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, and James Connelly). As World War I continued in Europe, however, Irish conscription was ordered by the British government in 1918. This precipitated a general insurrection, as an anti-conscription committee formed in Ireland, and the Catholic bishops in Ireland also openly opposed conscription.  

The Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein won a majority of the votes for parliament in the elections of 1918. The Sinn Fein policy of abstentionism meant that party members who were elected to serve in the British Parliament in London refused to take their seats. Sinn Fein won 73 of 105 seats for Ireland in the 1918 elections for the British Parliament, and these seats included 91% of the total seats beyond the Province of Ulster, which province at that time was dominated by Protestants. In 1919, these parliamentarians (the Dáil Eireann) met instead in Dublin and created a Provisional Government which reaffirmed the Easter Proclamation of 1916 and began an armed uprising with much greater numbers than in 1916.  

Michael Collins (1890-1922) led the Irish Republican Army’s guerilla campaigns against the British in the War of Independence in 1919-1921. Eamon de Valera (1882-1975) came to the U.S. several times in 1919-1920 to raise funds in support of the Dáil and political support for the revolutionary cause. De Valera had been born in New York City but was raised in County Limerick. He raised over $5 million, delivered speeches to large and sympathetic audiences, and made significant political allies for his cause in the U.S. 

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 created the Irish Free State, consisting of 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties. Six predominantly Protestant northern counties in the Province of Ulster were retained by Britain in the Province of Northern Ireland. The Irish Civil War (1922-1923) was fought between the side which accepted the division of Ireland under Collins and the side that did not under de Valera. Collins’ side won the Civil War but he was killed in action by the anti-treaty side.  De Valera went on to become the most successful Irish politician in modern history, and founded the Fianna Fáil party in 1926. 

The Irish Free State was a dominion of the British Empire, but dominion status ended in a 1937 Irish plebiscite and the country changed its name to Éire. The country reconstituted itself as the Republic of Ireland in 1949.  Support of Irish-Americans was solicited again to assist the Irish revolutionary cause circa 1969-1998 during the Troubles when groups like NORAID supported the Provisional IRA’s efforts to try to end British rule in the northern six counties. Eventually, American President Bill Clinton (born 1946) and US Senator George Mitchell (born 1933) helped to craft the Good Friday Agreement to end hostilities on April 10, 1998. 

Dr. William E. Watson is a Professor of History at Immaculata University. His research interests include medieval cross-cultural topics (convergences in the history of the West, the Islamic world, and Russia) and 20th century international relations in the era of World War II and the Cold War. He is the director of The Duffy’s Cut Project and has conducted research into an Irish-American railroader mass grave from 1832.