Irish Immigrates Force Free Blacks Out...

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Sorry but try as you might, you will never equalize racism suffered in the North or the South at the same level as the institution of slavery that the Southern states attempted to perpetuate and expand until its ending in 1865.

Both Sections History should be Told.

NYC Riots have been portrayed as not being Racist. Irish, and I don’t think it was Only a Irish Problem, hunted down Blacks. Hung and Ran them out of NYC, most never returned.

I don’t see why others can’t own up to their History without ultimately comparing it with the South. Just trying to hide behind the South. Yankees continue to do it here. Have done it for 200 years. It is Historical.
 
Narrative of the North fighting for Equality.

Small groups of Northerners fought for equality and dragged the rest of the Northerners with them...

Irish refugees were voluntary escapees vs. abductees

Something to add... How has the Irish kept their hands clean about their behavior towards Free Blacks and Slavery in the 19th century... if you are going to hold the Southerners accountable then the Irish need to be held accountable... along with Southern Jews that owned slaves... soiled hands are soiled hands...

Link:https://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/ge...came-white-immigrants-in-mid-19th-century-us/

In those days, the Irish immigrants had much in common with African-Americans; they might be nicknamed “Negroes turned inside out” while African-Americans would be “smoked Irish”. A quip, attributed to an African-American, went something like this: “My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman.” In the census of 1850, the term “mulatto” appears for the first time, due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African-Americans.

However this “alliance of the oppressed” did not happen.

The Irish supported the continuance of slavery, turning their backs on the Abolitionist cause, “while Irish American repealers maintained a pride and love for their homeland, they acted unabashedly American in the way they dealt with the slavery controversy”

For the poor, Black or White, Italian or Chinese, the equation was simple: “work or starve”.
Men fought each other, physically, for jobs, driving a wedge between their cultural communities. For the Irish in this “dog-eat-dog” job market, support of abolition would not have been a high priority.

Snip... wonder if true...this whine about 1790 law... how would poor Irish even know about the law...

Another deterrent to Irish support of abolition may have been the United States Naturalization Law of 1790 that restricted naturalization to “free white persons” and of “good moral character”. The aspiring citizen pledged to support the Constitution of the United States. Therefore the Irish may have hesitated to support Abolition, seeing it as a threat to the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the Irish went beyond passive support of slavery: “that the democratic party, and particularly the poorer class of Irish immigrants in America, are greater enemies to the Negro population, and greater advocates for the continuance of Negro slavery, than any portion of the population in the free States.”
 
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Fear and disparaging of minorities is a part of American History.

Contemporary English Germans who come to Pennsylvania are generally the most ignorant and stupid people of that country. They are not used to liberty and don’t know how to behave in a land that offers freedom. I remember when they did not vote in our elections. But now they come in large numbers and expect to vote on issues they know nothing about. Today they expect legal papers to be written in German. I suppose that in a few years we will have to have interpreters in the colonial assembly so that our lawmakers will understand what they are saying. In short unless they stop coming in large numbers they will outnumber us. Then we will not be able to preserve our own language and may even lose our own government. Source: Benjamin Franklin letter to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753 as cited in J. A. Leo Lemay (ed.), Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), p. 336
 
I found this by our own @Pat Young. He wrote an article and it was about Memphis but he points out the 1866 race riot in Memphis was again led by the Irish attacking the new Freedmen...

Link:https://longislandwins.com/columns/...ion-riot-irish-and-blacks-in-memphis-in-1866/

Black codes were enacted in state after state in the eight months before the Memphis riots. Many of the states allowed blacks to be whipped for minor offenses, just like they had been in slave days. By the Spring of 1866 African Americans were finding their new “freedom” precarious and dangerous. As violence increased throughout the occupied South, conflicts developed between the freed people and Memphis’s important Irish community. The presence of black troops in the city led to a clash that set many of the city’s Irish on a path of destruction. 16

Snip from wiki but this time the Irish controlled the city government...

Prior to the war, Irish immigrants had constituted a major wave of newcomers to the city: ethnic Irish made up 9.9 percent of the population in 1850, when there were 8,841 people in the city.[8] The population expanded at a rapid rate by 1860 to 22,623,[8] and the Irish constituted 23.2 percent.[14][15][16] They encountered considerable discrimination, but by 1860, they occupied most positions in the police force, and had gained many elected and patronage positions in city government, including the mayor's office.[17] But the Irish also competed with free blacks for lower-class jobs rejected by native whites, contributing to animosity between the two groups[7] (similar animosity between working class whites, including Irish immigrants, and free blacks competing for jobs were among the causes of acts of violence in the North, also, including the 1863 New York City draft riots).

I just want to point out it is always the Irish throwing the first punch and starting the riots against Free Blacks...
 
There have been several books and, probably, scores of monographs about the 1863 draft riots in New York. I suggest that every one of them speaks of the prominent role taken by the Irish, and the intense racist violence involved. Nothing has been hidden, concealed, or disguised. You can start with the 1863 report of the N.Y. Metropolitan Police, and follow through to the most recent studies. It's all there in plain sight.
 
Sorry but try as you might, you will never equalize racism suffered in the North or the South at the same level as the institution of slavery that the Southern states attempted to perpetuate and expand until its ending in 1865.

This always seems a bit of a red herring to me, as I seldom see anyone making any comparison to them being comparable to slavery, other then indentured servitude, which is recognized today as a form of slavery, certainly neither white or black racism ever approached the level of racism directed to Native Americans which bordered on ethnic cleansing.....However any honest discussion of racism in the United States should include it all, as it is all part of our nations history with racism.

The bizarre part to me is would think most people would acknowledge there is/was many forms of racism.....
 
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There have been several books and, probably, scores of monographs about the 1863 draft riots in New York. I suggest that every one of them speaks of the prominent role taken by the Irish, and the intense racist violence involved. Nothing has been hidden, concealed, or disguised. You can start with the 1863 report of the N.Y. Metropolitan Police, and follow through to the most recent studies. It's all there in plain sight.

John's point is well made. Uaskme's suggestion that there has been some big effort to cover up the racist violence of the NYC mobs in the 1863 Draft Riot is simply wrong, and ahistorical.

The Republican newspapers of the day (New York Tribune, New York Times, etc.) went to great lengths to report that Irish thugs were the perpetrators of the anti-black violence. Those newspapers wanted to associate the violence with the Democrats and with the Irish immigrants, who were mostly disdained, if not despised, by the Anglo Protestants who were the dominant force in the Republican Party.

I can tell you from personal experience that as a high school student in New York's Hudson River Valley in the 1970s that the racist atrocities of Draft Riot were not minimized or covered up in the public school curriculum even in parts of NY where there were a lot of Irish-Americans.

If you can tolerate a highly detailed academic approach to the subject let me suggest The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War by Iver Bernstein (Oxford University Press, 1990). Also good is the more accessible The Devil's Own Work by Barnet Schecter.
 
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Some Deny this History, because it doesn’t fit the Narrative of the North fighting for Equality. All part of Northern Nationalism which measures the North against the Racist, Slave Holding South.
As one who has been educated in the North, that has not been my experience. One can even make the argument that much of American history after 1865 has focused on the North: labor conditions and the growth of Unions, assimilation of immigrants, and yes, racial incidents.
The only "narrative" is undeniable fact: the successful quelling of the slaveholders' rebellion ended slavery in the United States.
 
As one who has been educated in the North, that has not been my experience. One can even make the argument that much of American history after 1865 has focused on the North: labor conditions and the growth of Unions, assimilation of immigrants, and yes, racial incidents.
The only "narrative" is undeniable fact: the successful quelling of the slaveholders' rebellion ended slavery in the United States.

Narrative is more than about quelling the Slave holders. It seems History and Fact other than the quelling has been reduced to Unimportant. Case in fact the Irish and the Negro. Member reduces it to, the North will never be as Racist as the South, no matter how much You TRY! We also hear, if it didn’t happen, it isn’t important. Also, Slaves were freed, so nothing else matters. And your Narrative about the Quelling. The Quelling had a far different context during the 50s and during the War. Neither was a priority until it was a Reality. Only accomplished as a result of a Civil War fought got other Reasons.

Being a Norther, hopefully you have studied these Issues. Member on this thread responded that the Negro just got in the way, during the NYC Riots. Understanding the Irish gives us great insight of the reasons the North abandoned Slavery as the result of the Economics of the Institution. Poor, starving immigrants replaced the Negro. All of this is important to the story. And surely, one wouldn’t want to reduce this History to the Content of someone wanting equate some equality of bad actions between the Sections.

Again, isn’t it not Silly to reduce this to, However you try, the North will never be as Racist as the South?
 
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