Irish Are Coming

In 1846, a 24 year old nun from County Carlow arrived in a young, rough Chicago. Mother Agatha O'Brien went on to build schools and a hospital, and she was only the beginning.Dr. Sophie Cooper of Queen's University Belfast joins Robert Moon to tell the story of the Irish nuns and women that history often leaves out. They nursed the city through cholera and cared for Chicago's Irish Brigade during the Civil War. As far as Dr. Cooper can tell, the Sisters of Mercy were the only group let inside the Camp Douglas prison camp. After the Great Fire of 1871, they walked the city collecting firewood to rebuild. The girls they taught went on to become teachers and union leaders.Why did Chicago open doors for Irish women that stayed closed in Boston and New York? Listen to find out.

Spanish and French colonial Louisiana through the antebellum city, 1768–1850s — from the Creole rebellion and its aftermath, through the first recorded New Orleans St. Patrick's Day celebration in 1806 and the Battle of New Orleans, to the digging of the New Basin Canal and the Irish church-building boom.With Dr. Laura D. Kelley — immigrant and ethnic historian at Tulane University, where she teaches history and directs the Dublin study-abroad program, and author of The Irish in New Orleans (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press). Her work traces Irish New Orleans from the colonial period forward, separating the documentary record from the city's most cherished Irish legends.Historian Laura D. Kelley on the Irishman who ended America's first colonial revolt — and the canal diggers whose deaths New Orleans has been exaggerating for a century."We use the term rebellion when we lose, and we use the term revolution when we win."— Dr. Laura D. Kelley

The American Civil War, 1861–1865, with roots reaching back to the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion and an epilogue reaching forward into the post-war Indian Wars (1860s–1880s).With Dr. Damian Shiels — founder of Irish in the American Civil War (2010), co-host of the Transatlantic podcast, and author of The Irish in the American Civil War (2014), The Forgotten Irish (2017), and Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 (LSU Press). He holds a Ph.D. in history from Northumbria University, where his research recovered the voices of Irish American soldiers through their own correspondence.Historian Damian Shiels reads the letters Irish soldiers sent home from the Civil War's bloodiest battlefields."I'm tired of the fighting and the killing of men, but I suppose we have to continue because that's what we need to do."— Barney Carr, Irish soldier, in his last letter home from Kennesaw Mountain, June 1864

The conversation centers on the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s and its transatlantic aftermath, with a particular focus on how the famine became the world's first large-scale international relief campaign — and how the famine influx reshaped New York's public health institutions. Shrout traces donations from Indian Territory and the enslaved South, and the rise of Bellevue's hospitals, poorhouses, and jails.With Dr. Anelise Hanson Shrout, an Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies and History at Bates College, cross-appointed in American Studies.Historian Dr. Anelise Shrout traces how the Great Irish Famine became one of the nineteenth century's first transnational humanitarian campaigns — drawing aid from the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and enslaved people in the American South, while Irish arrivals reshaped New York's hospitals, poorhouses, and jails."He had said, 'Will you give up one meal a day to aid the starving Irish?' … The enslaved people go away and they talk, and they come back and they say, 'We're not going to do that. We will, however, give you fifty dollars.'" — Dr. Anelise Shrout

Inside New York’s Most Notorious Slum The conversation centers on Five Points and Irish New York from the 1820s through the Civil War era, with a particular focus on the Great Famine influx of the 1840s–1850s and the neighborhood's politics, labor, and lore. Anbinder traces the slum's origins on a filled-in lake, the migration routes that brought the Irish there, the myth-busting reality of who could afford to come, and Lincoln's 1860 visit.With Dr. Tyler Anbinder, a Professor Emeritus of History at George Washington University, where he taught the history of American immigration and the Civil War era.Historian Dr. Tyler Anbinder takes us inside Five Points, nineteenth-century New York's most infamous immigrant neighborhood — revealing that the Irish who settled there were not simply the poorest of the poor, but workers, artisans, servants, and voters who reshaped the city's labor, politics, and streets."Poor people can't afford to emigrate to the United States… the ship's not giving you any food. Zero. Nothing. And no water. You have to bring your water, you have to bring your food — five weeks' worth." — Dr. Tyler Anbinder