The Irish standard., 1917-04-07
FIRST kENTuckIANs
Are OF EARLY LOST
IRISH immigrants
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OuulIl, WuiCll 10 .NOl dllu Ills
mother was a Morgan, and his wife
was a Bryan, and his father was an
Irish Catholic.
Three-Fourths Irish.
The records show that nearly three
fourths of that dauntless little band
who, under the leadership of George
Rogers Clark, an Irishman, waded
through the floods to take Vincennes
and thereby won the great northwest
territory away from the British and
gave to the American colonies what
today is the richest part of the United
States, were Irishmen-not Scotch
Irish, nor English-Irish, but plain Irish
-Irishmen who were rebels and pa.
triots by instinct and born adventur,
ers by reason of the blood which ran
in their veins.
The first settlement of English
speaking Catholics beyond the ALE.
pheny Mountains was not located in
the north, but in the south, and in
my own state of Kentucky, at that. It
endures today, after having given to
this country one of it's greatest and
most scholarly churchmen, Bishop
Spalding. The children OF the pio-
neers OF Kentucky. almost without en-
log cabins under the teachings of that
strange, but gifted race of men, the
wandering Irish schoolmasters, who
founded the old field schools of the
south and to whom the south is large
ly indebted for the seeds of it's culture
Irishmen from Kentucky. Virginia,
Pennsylvania and Maryland bore the
brunt of the western campaigns in
1912 against the British. Irishmen
from Kentucky fell thick at the disas-
trous battles of the Thames and the
Raison, and their Irish bones today
rest in the ground, sanctifying it and
making OF it an American shrine of
patriotism. 1t was the hand of a Ken
lucky Irishman, Col. Richard Johnson,
afterwards vice president of the Unit
ed States, that slew the great Tecum-
sch. A good share of the Kentucky
and Tennessee riflemen who at New
Orleans stood behind Andy .Jackson's
cotton bale breastwOrks, moving down
Packenham's Peninsular veterans and
making their red coats redder still
with the life blood of those invaders,
were lrishmen, real Irishmen. They
proved their Irish lineage by the fact
that they fell out and quarreled with
Old Hickory, because he denied them
all credit for winning the fight, and
he quarreled back, for he was by way
OF being all Irishman himself
1t was Kentucky Irishman and a
soldier, Theodore O'Hara, who penned
perhaps the most beautiful lyric poem,
and certainly the sweetest tribute to
the brave in our language, the immor-
tai "Bivouac of the Dead" 1t was
another Kentucky Irishman, the saint
ly poet-priest, Father Ryan, whose
hand wrote those two fondest poems
in memory of the Lost Cause, 1.-The
Conquered Banner" and The Sword OF
Robert f. Lee"
What is true of Kentucky is to a
greater or less degree true of the rest
OF the south. 1t was an Irish Vir
gilman, Patrick Henry, who sounded
the first keynote of the American rev
olution, and who, at the risk of his
life, by his words paved the way for
the Declaration of Independence. The
South Carolina 1rishman, John c. Cal
houn, first raised the slogan of Multi
fication, and it was another Irishman
Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, who
swore by the Eternal to hang him
higher than Hannah if he carried out
his plan.
The north has put her heroes on a
pension, but the south has put hers
on a pedestal. There is not south
ern hamlet of any size today that has
not reared bronze or marble or gran
lite monument to its own defenders in
the Civil War, and there is scarcely a
southern home, where at the knees OF
the mother, the children are not taught
to revere the memories and remem
Der the deeds Of Lee and Jackson and
Forrest, the Tennessee lrislman, and
Morgan, the Kentucky 1rishman, and
Washington and Light Horse Harry
Lee, and Francis Marion, the Irish
Swamp Fox of the Carolinas believe
as firmly as believe anything on earth
that fer that generation, for that love
of heroism and for that joying in the
ideals of its soil, the south is indebted
mainly to the Irish blood that courses
through the veins of it's sons and
daughters.
No, most assuredly no, the lost Irish
tribes of the south are not lost; they
are not lost 'any more than the wild
geese that flew across the channel
from Ireland were lost. They are not
lost any more than the McMahons who
went to France, or the O'Donnells who
went to Spain, or the Simon Bolivars
and the O'Higgins who went to South
America, or the O'Farrells and the
O'Briens who went to Cuba. For theil
Irish blood is of the strain that can
not be extinguished and it lives today
thank God, in the attributes and the
habits of the customs of the southern
roonlo