The Immortal Irishman: Thomas Meager and the Invention of Irish America

by Tim Egan

Frederick Douglass could not understand this. During his trip to Ireland in 1845, then about the same age as most of the well-spoken rebels, Douglass had found a country of empty pantries that still opened its doors to him. “One of the most pleasing features of my visit thus far has been the total absence of all manifestations of prejudice against me on account of my color,” he wrote. But in the late 1850s in America, he saw a hardening of Irish attitudes toward blacks. “Perhaps no class of our fellow citizens has carried this prejudice against color to a point more extreme and dangerous than have our Catholic Irish fellow citizens,” he said. “And no people on the face of the earth have been more relentlessly persecuted and oppressed on account of race and religion than have these same Irish people. The Irish who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro. They are taught that he eats the bread that belongs to them.”