On July Fourth 1779, Congress went to Mass. One newspaper reported that on “the day which gave freedom to the vast republic of America, the Congress, the president and councils of state, with other civil and military officers” attended “Roman chapel” at the invitation of “His Most Christian Majesty” Louis XVI’s emissary. “A Te Deum was performed,” giving “great satisfaction to all present.” Protestant American rebels worshipping with Catholic French monarchists elicited cross-confessional interest in another country: Ireland.
The above report comes from the Presbyterian Londonderry Journal in the north of Ireland. Writing for the Anglican Freeman’s Journal in Dublin, Catholic polemicist Father Arthur O’Leary wondered how “banishment and proscription, on account of religious systems” still prevailed in Ireland when “Presbyterians and Catholics chant the Te Deum in the same chapel in America?” Irish interest in Franco-American worship suggests that the American Revolution was a war with not only global implications but religious ones too. Irishmen and Irish-Americans—Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic—provided essential manpower for both rebels and royalists alike. How Crown and Congress respectively managed religious tensions in mobilizing Irish troops helped decide the war’s outcome. The Continental Army overcame sectarian tensions to become a multiconfessional force. In contrast, King George’s army saw religious animosities hamper recruitment, strain soldier-officer relations, and polarize the war in Ireland.
Nearly half a million Irish immigrated to British North America in the eighteenth century. Outside New England, one in six white Americans were of Irish descent. Two-thirds were “Scotch-Irish” Presbyterians, the rest mostly Catholics. The American colonies appealed to Irishmen because they lacked the religious hierarchy that restricted liberty and opportunity in Ireland. Sectarian and dynastic wars in seventeenth-century Ireland produced a “Protestant Ascendancy” that prescribed privileges for Anglicans but led to dispossession for Catholics and discrimination against Presbyterians. While Catholics owned two-thirds of Irish land in 1640, they retained only a tenth of it sixty years later. “Penal laws” deprived Catholics of civil rights. Largely of Scottish descent, Presbyterians provided invaluable settlers and soldiers to the Ascendancy, yet remained second-class subjects. The Sacramental Test Act excluded most Presbyterians from politics. The linen industry, lifeblood of Presbyterian Ulster, suffered trade fluctuations exacerbated by British commercial rules. Presbyterians resented Anglican attempts in the 1710s to nullify their marriages and collect tithes. New Light minister John Abernathy’s call for “every man” to “enjoy the freedom of following the Light of his Conscience” resonated with Presbyterians. Unavailable in Ireland, economic and religious liberty proved plentiful in America.
“The Irish in America, with a few exceptions, were attached to independence,” observed a South Carolina patriot.. Irish Presbyterians constituted a fifth of Pennsylvanians and a quarter of South Carolinians and Georgians.. Frontier fights against the French and their Native American allies reinforced Presbyterian attachment to ideals of liberty and property. Many Irish Presbyterians had preferred to emigrate than to pay tithes supporting an exclusionary Ascendancy. Their descendants preferred to fight than to pay taxes imposed by a remote Parliament. If the first shot at Concord was likely discharged by a New England Puritan, many future volleys fired in freedom’s name came from Irish Presbyterians.
The molding of Irish Catholics into American patriots faced more obstacles than for Presbyterians. Thomas Paine associated “popery in religion with popery in politics.” Samuel Adams declared “our forefathers threw off the yoke of popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of levelling popery in politics.” Congress branded Catholicism a religion that “dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.” And yet, as often occurs in times of expediency, military imperatives softened anti-Catholic prejudice. During the invasion of Canada in 1775, congressional overtures to Canadian Catholics stressed religious liberty. The invasion’s commander, Irish-born Protestant Richard Montgomery, earned Catholic goodwill for his generous treatment of Montreal. Although Canada remained royal, patriot appeals to Canadian Catholics facilitated Irish Catholic participation in the revolutionary cause.
Irish Presbyterians and Catholics contributed to a multiconfessional Continental Army. Both featured in senior ranks. Henry Knox, an Irish Presbyterian bookseller, delivered the artillery to Boston that forced the British to evacuate that city. He rose to chief of artillery and served as Washington’s first Secretary of War. Irish Presbyterian physician James McHenry served as a regimental surgeon and Washington’s aide. Postwar, he attended the Constitutional Convention and helped create the Navy Department. Two Irish Catholics, Stephen Moylan and Thomas Conway, became major generals. Moylan and another Catholic, James O’Hara, served as quartermaster general. John Barry, the first commander of a U.S. warship, was a Catholic from Ireland’s south coast. Irish troops abounded down the ranks. Pennsylvania’s “common soldiers,” one American observed, “were for the most part natives of Ireland.” A British officer believed “the chief strength of the Rebel Army at present consists of Natives of Europe, particularly Irishmen.” In the Carolina backcountry, Irish Presbyterians sustained insurgent resistance after the British captured the principal towns. These “Back-Mountain men,” Lord Cornwallis complained, “showed themselves to be our most inveterate enemies.” Their resistance helped persuade him to quit the Carolinas for Virginia, a road that ended with his defeat at Yorktown.
On the British side, a sixth of the King’s soldiers and a third of his officers were Irish. Yet, the religious-political hierarchy that compelled so many Presbyterians and Catholics to quit Ireland for America also impeded royal efforts to leverage Irish manpower in reconquering America. Until 1774, it was illegal to recruit Irish Catholics. Despite subsequent Cabinet requests for “regiments from Irish Roman Catholics,” many British officers were contemptuous of Irish troops. Irish artillerymen were “lower than serpents” according to one English commander. Irish officers, scions of the Anglican elite, also disliked Irish troops. One Anglican Irish colonel placed a bounty on Irish deserters: five guineas taken alive, ten dead. British commander-in-chief Henry Clinton was moved to complain that “the real or fancied oppression” Irish-Americans attributed to their former Anglican overlords discouraged them from joining loyalist regiments.
Trouble also brewed on the Irish home front. Catholics and Presbyterians proved reluctant recruits. Enlistment went “very slowly,” a British minister worried, and the number of annual recruits in Ireland seldom exceeded that of deserters. Attacks on recruiting parties were common. Parts of the press opposed recruitment. “It was merely for the purpose of slaughtering our troops,” alleged one Presbyterian newspaper, “that this wicked war with America is continued.” British ministers feared that Irish opinion favored the Americans. “Dissenters are almost all Americans,” fumed one official. Another believed Irish “papists” were “connected by interest” and Presbyterians were “attached by principle” to the Americans. Presbyterian-populated seaports like Belfast were accused of smuggling with the rebels. Gaelic-Catholic poets celebrated “stalwart Washington.” French entry into the war stimulated British fears that Catholics would welcome a Bourbon invasion of Ireland. As the conflict in America lengthened, discontent deepened in Ireland, absorbing the energy of Britain’s overstretched government.
The Irish were essential to both the royal and revolutionary war efforts in the American Revolution. Yet only one side maximized Irish support. Aversion to religious hierarchy first motivated the immigration of Irish Catholics and Presbyterians to America and then facilitated their support for American independence. On the British side, the same aversion created tension between Anglican officers and Irish troops, restricted enlistment among Catholics and Presbyterians, and seeded unrest in Ireland. The promise of liberty and opportunity in America offered many Irish a refuge from their troubled country. Irish exertions in the patriot cause helped to further realize that promise through American independence.