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Essay about Honored Irish Immigrants

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For many people, the American dreams and promises brought ideas and new hopes of a better life. For the Irish, the American dreams and promises weren’t just ideas and hopes, they were the way to a new beginning in America, a way to start over and forget the horrifying past they encountered. The Irish struggled day after day to pay for fair travel to America. To many people, the challenge the Irish overcame seemed to deserve praise. Today, the Irish are honored and commemorated for their hard work and desire for a better life.
The start of the Irish’ peoples struggles began when the British came and destroyed their way of life. The Penal laws of 1691 stripped Irish Catholics of their freedoms by taking away their rights to become officers …show more content…

People worried about the potato crop. At first, the potatos seemed fine, but after further examination the potatos were rotten. In October of 1845, Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, established a scientific commission to discover over half of Irelands potatos had been ruined by “wet rot.” The potato crop failed time and time again. Irish people began to lose hope in receiving better living conditions, but the shipping lanes opened to America after they had been closed by the war (Philip). Irish began to think of the American dream and promise.
The American dream and promise changes a nations state of mind. It originally comes from the Declaration of Independence. The promise is “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The dream: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” All of which were things the Irish desired (Pendry).
According to Philips, between 1815 and 1816, around 20,000 Irish traveled to the Americas. These emigrants were mostly professionals and shopkeepers, because farmers couldn’t afford travel. Over the next two decades shipping fees continued to have outrageous prices, but between 1823 and 1825 more people, such as the merchants and farmers, were able to travel because free passage and land grants were allowed to Catholics. The largest emigration was in 1827 when nearly 400,000 Irish traveled to the Americas on Coffin Ships; overcrowded ships filled

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