The Lincoln of Ireland at Fenway Park (episode 303)

Transcript

Introduction

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe. This is episode 303, the Lincoln of Ireland at Fenway Park. Hi, I’m Jake a few years ago. I just happened to be walking past the corner of Washington and school streets when Irish President Michael Higgins was placing a wreath on the Irish famine memorial. Higgins is the ninth president of Ireland. And this week, I’m gonna talk about the first, 100 5 years ago. This month Irish President Eamon de Valera embarked on an 18 month tour of the United States starting with a visit to Boston. His goals were to raise funds for the Irish Republic gain international recognition and garner support for Irish independence from British rule de Valera. Visit to Boston included a massive rally at Fenway Park. A speech to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and visits to historical sites despite facing challenges such as his questionable immigration status and opposition from Yankee line politicians. The tour was a success laying the groundwork for nearly a century of American support for Irish Republican causes before the Good Friday Accords brought the troubles to a good and final end.

Jake:
[1:27] But before we talk about De Valera s triumphant visit to Boston, I just want to pause and thank everyone who supports Hub history on Patreon, pulling back the curtain. One of the reasons I chose this week’s topic is because there are a lot of sources and that makes the research pretty easy. And I’m also simultaneously working on a future episode. That’s gonna be a lot more involved, including a fair amount of field recording. It’s taking a lot of time to plan record and cut together that upcoming show. But that’s simply an investment of time creating a podcast. Also takes an investment of money, not least of all for the newspaper archives that allowed me to easily put together the primary sources for this episode. Our Patreon sponsors commit to giving us $2.05 dollars or even $20 or more each month to offset the monetary cost of making the show if you’re already a sponsor. Thanks. And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com/hub History or visit hubor.com and click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors. Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

The Historic Rally at Fenway Park

Jake:
[2:42] A photo on the front page of the Boston Globe for June 30th 1919 shows a sea of humanity packed into Fenway Park the day before the grandstands are overflowing. The bleachers are jammed and the field is choked with men in suits and straw hats, standing shoulder to shoulder, craning their necks to get a glimpse of the small wooden stage that’s been erected on the infield and decorated with flags and bunting, at the center of the throng is a tall thin man with an angular face, a high forehead and the wire rimmed spectacles of a mathematics professor, which is what he had been until just a few years earlier.

Jake:
[3:21] This giant audience hasn’t turned out to see a professor, however, but rather a war hero and the head of a newly proclaimed republic that’s so far not recognized by any other nation. Massachusetts, Senator David Walsh will introduce the speaker as the Lincoln of Ireland, where the speaker actually introduced himself to the New York Tribune upon his arrival to the US just a few days ago saying I spell my name E am on. Although the proper Gaelic calls for two Ns Amon is Gaelic for Edward, which is what I was christened here in New York, I use only one in because in Ireland, we believe in the simplification of all things including spelling, I write de Valera with a small D and then in parentheses, there’s a helpful phonetic pronunciation saying it is pronounced devil era.

Jake:
[4:17] Irish president Ayman De Valera speech at Fenway Park was the first major public appearance in what would become an 18 month American tour on June 30th. The New York Sun described the reception that he found in Boston, Mr de Valera. On the occasion of his first appearance at a public meeting since his mysterious arrival in the country received a rousing welcome. The speaking platform placed over the home plate of the baseball diamond appeared at times in danger of collapse under the crush of the thousands who surged out of the stands and carried press tables and all police arrangements with them. Several women fainted in the jam, and the infield crowd, people held signs aloft saying England is disqualified and unfit to rule Ireland. Let us carry your cross for Ireland and we demand England withdraw 140,000 soldiers from Ireland.

Jake:
[5:17] Adding to the hubbub, several marching bands competed from different corners of the grandstands to see who could play Irish patriotic songs. The loudest finally, De Valera took the stage apologizing that his voice would not carry to every corner of the vast crowd. He thanked Irish Americans for their support of the Republican cause and expressed his hope that President Woodrow Wilson’s statement that the late Great War had been fought to make the world safe for democracy would be extended to the Irish Republic.

Jake:
[5:49] The peace treaty ending that war was on the table and De Valera hoped that his nation’s cause could become part of this historical moment. Saying we in Ireland watched with keen interest, every development, our strategic object since we came out of prison has been to put Ireland in the proud position. She now occupies a definite claimant for her full rights ready to enter the world. Family of nations. I will read for you an extract from our parliamentary declaration on the League of Nations. It is a motion that was carried unanimously in order to be sent to your president, that the elected parliament and government of the Irish Republic pledged the entire support of the Irish nation in translating into deeds the principles enunciated by the president of the United States at Washington’s tomb on July 4th 1918 and wholeheartedly accepted by the people of America. During the war, we are eager and ready to enter a world league of nations based on an equality of right and which the guarantees exchanged, neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. We are willing to accept all the duties, responsibilities and burdens which a conclusion in such a league implies.

Jake:
[7:06] Ireland offers herself unreservedly in that cause let America and America’s president take the fortunes that fate clearly indicates for them and emancipate and save the world. A league of nations can be framed in Washington as well as in Paris. Now is the time to frame it. It is not enough to destroy, you must build the material and the artificers are in abundance.

Jake:
[7:33] Whether or not his voice could be heard in every corner of the ballpark. The crowd went wild with support for his message and cause with the July 12th Irish standard of Minneapolis opining, President de Valera took the culture to the intensely American city of Boston by storm. When he made his initial American public address at Fenway Park in the Massachusetts capital on Sunday, June 29th, it is estimated that 70,000 people assembled to greet the great Irish leader on that memorable occasion. And the reception accorded to him will pass into history as perhaps the most enthusiastic one ever given to any man within the gates of the Athens of America, the spirit of 76 of Manuel Hall and of Bunker Hill was revived and embodied in the frenzied cheers of welcome that issued from the vast throngs assembled to honor a patriot of the American type. An Irish reincarnation of the heroism of the revolution.

Jake:
[8:30] On paper, Eman de Valera was an unlikely hero born in a New York City Hospital in 1882 to a mother who had immigrated from County Limerick and a father who’s alternately described as Cuban basque and Spanish. And after the father died, an uncle took him from poverty in New York to be raised in Limerick and Cork in the old country. At 16, he won a scholarship to Blackrock College in Dublin. And by 1903, he had his first position as a professor where fellow faculty gave him the nickname Dev. In an article in the New Hibernia Review in 2006, Troy D Davis describes how a quiet intellectual rose to national prominence. De Valera came to play a leadership role in politics relatively late in life. Although he was raised in a nationalist household in County Limerick, where under the tutelage of his uncle Pat Call, he took an interest in parliamentary politics from a young age. And although he was inspired by the cultural nationalist ferment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and joined the Gaelic League in 1908. Not until late 1913, when he was 31 years old, did De Valera begin to take an active role in Irish nationalist politics? That was the year he joined the Irish volunteers in that organization. He rose to the rank of commandant.

Jake:
[9:55] In 1916, Republican forces rebelled against the British occupation of Ireland. In a six day conflict known as the Easter rising. De Valera was ordered to defend the Southeastern approaches to Dublin from British troops. And his third battalion of Irish volunteers took up positions in Bolan’s Mill on the Grand Canal where De Valera earned the respect of his fellow revolutionaries. The June 29th, 1919, New York Tribune quotes Dev’s deputy and Irish minister of Parliament, Harry Boland on those days, if you could only know the dear man like I know him, wished mister Boland if it seems strange to you that he should flit through British barriers in and out of jails. And such like you’ve only got to remember that in Ireland, five men out of six are prepared to die for him. These last few years have been wonderful years to me, full of excitement. They’ve been the most wonderful time was lying behind the barricades during Easter Week. That was excitement for you. We lost about 65 men killed and the British lost about 3500.

Jake:
[11:04] The trained soldier becomes demoralized when he has to fight in the streets. Of a town. You can’t blame him. It’s the fault of his training. It was then that you should have seen De Valera with his little battalion. He stood off three British divisions for days. A wonderful strategist. He is the British will tell you. So there was a building that stood between the house in which he was and the barracks at which he was sniping. I’ll make the British clear that out of my way. He said then he had an Irish flag hoisted under the roof of the obstructing building. The British decided that the building was filled with Irish and they opened on it with artillery, a few shells and they leveled the building. After that, De Valera snipers had a clear shot at the barracks.

Jake:
[11:55] The third battalion was one of the last units to surrender at the end of the rising. And Dev was left as one of the last surviving Republican leaders. Other officers were quickly dragged before British firing squads after their capture. But by the time De Valera surrendered, there was mounting political pressure to stop the executions. In his article, Troy D Davis continues, he saw himself primarily as a soldier rather than as a political leader. And his role during the Easter rising can best be described as that of a second tier leader subordinate to men such as Pearce and Connolly who of course were executed in the aftermath of the rebellion. Prior to that point in terms of his actual life experience. De Valera can be described more accurately as a mathematician and teacher than as a national leader. Over the three years following the Easter rising, De Valera spent most of his time in various British prisons. It was not until that period that he first began to emerge as a significant force in the Republican movement and it was primarily his status as the senior surviving officer of the rising that won in that standing in the eyes of his fellow prisoners.

Jake:
[13:09] After being released from prison. In 1917, he was elected as a Sinn Fein minister of the Irish Parliament from East Clare. And quickly thereafter joined the organization’s National Executive committee that October. He was elected president of Sinn Fein. And two days later, he was also elected president of the Irish volunteers combining as Davis points out political and military sides of the movement under the leadership of one person. He was again imprisoned in May 1918, escaped in February 1919 and was elected president of the newly declared Irish Republic. That April just two months after taking office, Dev arrived in America on a mission to raise money for the cause. Tie Ireland’s fate to the widespread global political upheaval following the Great War and hopefully to inspire the US to recognize the Irish Republic as a sovereign state.

Jake:
[14:05] In a 2019 article, Daniel Mulhall Irish ambassador to the United States wrote, De Valero’s appearance in Boston was part of his 18 month sojourn in the United States while Ireland’s war of independence was raging at home. At that time, De Valera was president of the Irish Republic whose independence had been declared by the first Irish Dale in January 1919. When a majority of those elected from Irish constituencies at the general election of December 1918, refused to take their seats at Westminster and convened instead at Dublin’s Mansion House.

Jake:
[14:42] It might seem odd that the leader of a political movement dedicated to creating an independent Irish state should absent himself from his country at such a crucial time. De Valero’s decision was not as unusual as it might at first sight appear for the key requirement of the fledgling state that he represented was international recognition. The Sinn Fein movement had tried and failed to secure recognition at the Versailles Peace Conference where President Wilson had declined to apply the principle of self determination to Ireland on account of the fact that it was part of the territory of his British ally.

Jake:
[15:16] The mission to tie Irish independence to the new international order that was emerging out of the Treaty of Versailles was failing but the independence movement enjoyed widespread support in the United States, between the millions of Americans who could trace their lineage back to Ireland in the 75 years since Irish immigration spiked with the potato famine and the broad anti imperial sentiments that have been sparked by the war against the Kaiser Britain was worried that the US would provide diplomatic recognition to the fledgling Irish Republic, in order to split Republican supporters in Ireland. And the US. British Prime Minister Lloyd George put forward a proposal that would have given the Irish limited self government within the British Dominion, similar to the status of Commonwealth countries like Australia or Canada. At the time in the June 27th edition of the New York, Sun de Valera was quoted rejecting this proposal out of hand. I hope the American people won’t be deceived by any such pretenses colonial government that would give us our own army and our own navy and the right to regulate our own customs and other branches of the government would be giving us our just rights. But England will never do this. If Lloyd George would favor it, the British Parliament would find some way of cutting down the privileges or organize another rebellion in Ulster.

Jake:
[16:38] Colonial government that would give us our own army and our own navy and the right to regulate our own customs and other branches of the government would be giving us our just rights. But England will never do this. If Lloyd George would favor it, the British Parliament would find some way of cutting down the privileges or organize another rebellion in Ulster Ireland is entitled to full rights. And those are the only things she’ll be satisfied with the offer of the British government is only to gain time. England has no right to measure the amount of justice she will give us. It is strangely amusing and his eyes twinkled with amusement that our demands are even more moderate than Dominion form of government. See, it’s like a partnership. One member of the partnership, Ireland could demand a certain status in the firm, but she doesn’t, she goes about her own business surely that is more moderate than asking a share in the partnership. Isn’t it? Understand? I don’t want to discuss home rule. No, Irishman does. Irish people will never really be satisfied until the national debt of honor is paid and that means recognition of the Irish Republic by the nations of the Earth.

De Valera’s Clandestine Entry to the US

Jake:
[17:59] In his quest to raise funds in support of the new Republican government in Ireland and secure recognition of the state dev was somewhat hindered by the fact that as a fugitive from the British authorities, he held no passport. He was very cagey about how he had entered the US saying that if he complied with us laws about using official points of entry, it would make it easier for the British authorities to arrest him. Some news reports hinted that he had slipped into the country via Boston before making his way to his American base of operations in New York City, de Valera s lack of a passport and the fact that he represented a country that didn’t officially exist, complicated his relationship with the federal government. On June 28th, 1919, Birmingham, Alabama’s age, Herald reported although Ayman De Valera president of the Irish Republic is in the United States, he isn’t. That is as far as official Washington is concerned. Discussion of the Sinn Fein executive is strictly informal. De Valera has no diplomatic status. As long as he retains the title of president, he cannot be recognized by officialdom even for purposes of a visit. However, there is no law which denies a visitor to these United States the right to flaunt his title or to work for the flotation in this country of the proposed issue of Irish bonds.

Jake:
[19:29] However, he had managed to pull off a clandestine and undocumented entry into the United States. Deb was eager to start the speaking tour for which Boston would be the first stop just before boarding a train for Boston. The Irish president had several testy exchanges with the reporters who wanted to know more about how he had entered the country. But in the midst of that, the June 29th, New York Tribune reported on a more friendly exchange with the assembled press corps.

Jake:
[19:57] He softened for a moment and explained that his first visit in the United States was to his mother in Rochester, New York. It had been 12 years since he saw her last in Ireland and then only for a short time. And the last time before that was 19 years earlier and he was a slender, black haired fatherless boy of six years when this tall man of many adventures was 2.5 years old. His father died and his mother returned to Ireland with her baby son. She married again becoming Mrs Charles Wheelwright and lived once more in America, raising another son, Thomas Wheelwright to be a priest in the Roman Catholic church. While little Edward grew up in Ireland, a lonely studious soul who learned to hate England before he learned to love, reminded of his American birth and consequent American citizenship. Professor de Valera said so far as my will and my desire are concerned, I am Irish. I’ve never wanted to be anything else and I acknowledge no allegiance to any other country or people.

Jake:
[21:05] International law may disagree with that. But international law to my mind is a sort of rules of conduct among thieves. There is a deeper law than the law of nations or of municipalities. The law of humanity is the most fundamental of all by the law of humanity. I am Irish, one thing I am certain of under no law on earth. Am I a British citizen?

Jake:
[21:32] On Saturday, June 28th, Dev took the train from New York to Boston arriving at South Station at about 640 pm to what the Boston Globe called a mighty welcome. About 25,000 supporters were waiting at the station but they had to stand by while a small army of photographers and newsreel cameramen got their pictures. Then they pushed forward to get a look at this living symbol of Irish independence. With the June 29th Springfield Union reporting, Ivan de Valera was given a tumultuous greeting when he stepped off his train at the South Station tonight on his arrival from New York to bring the message of the Irish Republic to New England. Cheers and shouts came from the throng which packed one end of the train shed in the sidewalks and streets outside the station. The members of the city council who’d been designated by Mayor Peters to welcome the Irish revolutionists to the city had difficulty in forcing a passage through the crowd to awaiting automobile, escorted by several other cars. Mister De Valera was taken to the Copley Plaza Hotel in the back bay district. The crowd closing in behind and on both sides and accompanying the automobiles for the entire distance. A band headed the procession.

Jake:
[22:51] On Saturday, June 28th. The Boston Globe carried the schedule for De Valera three day visit to Boston on the front page.

Jake:
[22:59] It’s a perfect time capsule for the era because the story is flanked on either side by a story about the signing of the peace treaty that ended the Great War on one side. And another story about booze sales surging in anticipation of a prohibition measure going into effect on July 1st on the other side, starting with his Saturday arrival in Boston. Here’s what was planned for De Valero’s visit today. 6 p.m. arrives at South Station 7 p.m. Dinner at Copley Plaza with the City Council 9 p.m. Reception presentation by the Gaelic Club with an address by Martin Milroy Sunday. 8:30 a.m. Committees to meet at Copley Plaza and accompany President De Valera at a mission church, Roxbury, accompanying committees to include advisory bench and bar. Boston City Council and Cambridge City Council 9 a.m. Mass at Mission Church 9:45 a.m. Breakfast at Mission Church Rectory 10:30 a.m. Auto ride through Fenway Cambridge Charlestown visits to historic spots including Bunker Hill 12:30 p.m. Return to Copley Plaza. 1245 pm presentation by Irish County Clubs of Flowers, et cetera.

Jake:
[24:24] One pm, lunch by advisory committee, 230 pm. Leave Hotel for Fenway Park.

Jake:
[24:33] 6 p.m. return to hotel. And then there’s a note that essentially means the schedule is up in the air depending on what De Valera wants to do. That evening, Monday morning, auto trip to Concord in Lexington 1:30 p.m. President de Valera to address the Massachusetts House of Representatives. 5 p.m. leaves for New York. Mayor Peters officially welcomed De Valera to visit Boston with the June 26th Globe quoting the invitation, on behalf of the citizens of Boston, I have the privilege of extending to you the greetings of a city whose citizens have such deep sympathy with the cause for which you are working. It will be a real pleasure to have you with us.

Jake:
[25:22] A committee of Irish American attorneys had already secured Fenway Park for Sunday afternoon, but one member of the State Senate threw a monkey wrench into the plan for Dev to address both houses of the Massachusetts legislature on Monday, quoting State Senate President Edwin T mcknight, the June 28th Springfield evening Union reported, so far as I’ve been able to learn, Mr De Valera has not been recognized by the officials at Washington as representing with authority, the people of Ireland. Neither have I been able to learn of any other state in the country that has given official recognition to him, a legislative body should always exercise the utmost caution and granting official recognition to officers who do not come from some constituted government duly recognized and with proper credentials, entitling them to be received officially by the commonwealth. To accord formal recognition to one who has not already been recognized by our government. At Washington might not only seriously embarrass our own commonwealth, but it might embarrass the government of our United States as well. And my position as presiding officer, I felt it to be my duty to take the action, which I did. I merely ask that action on the order be postponed until the following legislative day because I felt the members of the Senate should have time in which to carefully consider the order before acting on it.

Jake:
[26:46] Postponing action on the order until the next legislative day meant waiting until Monday and that would be too late to make arrangements for De Valera to speak the same day. Luckily, the House of Representatives stepped in and invited Dev to speak to their chamber. Then they invited the State Senate to join them as guests with a brief notice in the July 1st New York Sun, stating the House of Representatives had invited Mr De Valera as President of Ireland to address the body, the Senate because of the insistence of President mcknight on parliamentary procedure, took no action on a motion to invite him before the upper branch, the house, however, extended to the Senate an invitation to be present in the house chamber during the Irish leader’s visit. And at President mcknight’s suggestion, the senators accepted unanimously.

Jake:
[27:40] On the evening of his arrival, De Valera was toasted at a reception throne by the Gaelic Society of Boston. Or he emphasized the importance of securing support in Boston. And the symbolism that Boston’s revolutionary history held for his own revolutionary generation quoted here in the July 12th Catholic Tribune of Saint Joseph’s Missouri.

Jake:
[28:01] This is Boston. Boston associated in the minds of the whole world with the opening of your great revolution, which not only won liberty for Americans, but fired the subject peoples everywhere with a desire for a similar freedom and gave them not merely the inspiration but the determination also.

Jake:
[28:21] Yes, Boston, the Boston of Adams and of Otis of Hancock and of Paul Revere and of those gallant patriots of Irish blood who fought with them. What more suitable place could we begin the work we have set before us that of pointing out to the people of America that it still remained for them to finish the great work which they started nearly 150 years ago, when your father set out to free themselves from the intolerable slavery of foreign rule. They did not confine their vision to that of their own freedom merely but saw in the success of their efforts, the triumph of liberty and the defeat of slavery everywhere they set consciously to work that men in all lands might be free. They acted not for a single people only but for all mankind. Can anyone doubt that? Were they among you today? They would join with you in declaring that this thing, the subjugation of nations by military violence must die upon the earth. Your fathers fought and broke the chains that bound you to George the third.

Mass at Mission Hill

Jake:
[29:26] We ask you their sons to assist us in breaking the chains that bind Ireland to George the fifth.

Jake:
[29:34] On Sunday morning after the scheduled series of breakfast meetings at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Deb was off to celebrate mass at the basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Mission Hill. This was both good politics and a deeply personal outing. Nearly from the moment that he publicly surfaced in New York. De Valera had been talking about how excited he was to visit Boston, our revolutionary historic sites. And very importantly, his half brother Thomas Wheelwright, the June 27th edition of the globe quoted Dev as saying, I know Boston, you probably know that my brother, Father Wheelwright is a priest at the mission church in Roxbury. I’m delighted to have the great privilege of presenting Ireland’s cause to the liberty, loving people of Boston. Every Irishman and woman knows the story of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. And Boston Common is almost as famous in history as Phoenix Park in Dublin. I hope I shall have time to visit all these shrines of liberty. And I very much want to see the spot where the patriots of Boston threw the tea overboard.

Jake:
[30:46] A 2019 post for the Irish Boston History and Heritage blog notes. As he approached the mission church for the nine am Sunday mass on June 29th, he was greeted by a large crowd of supporters. When his automobile approached, a deafening cheer arose and hundreds tried to push forward and shake his hand. President De Valera knelt at the head of the middle aisle near the sanctuary rail. The officials who accompanied him included Mayor Edward W Quinn of Cambridge and President Ford of the Cambridge City Council, the Reverend Father Kenna and greeting De Valera told the congregation a cordial welcome to our honored guest pours forth from the hearts of our community and all its people. On this memorable occasion, we thank him for honoring this church by selecting it to assist at the sacrifice of the mass. I assure him that the congregation of no other church in the United States is more solidly behind him and the cause which he represents than the congregation of the mission church. The 125 piece mission church field band marched from the church to Fenway Park with 3000 parishioners in total 6000 people from Irish clubs and societies marched in the Irish Association division.

Jake:
[32:08] After a private family breakfast with his half brother at the rectory. The motorcade sped back to the Copley Plaza rather than proceeding on to tour Cambridge as had been originally planned for Sunday afternoon, asking for an hour of privacy to write out his remarks for the Fenway Park rally. That evening, de retreated to his room only occasionally glancing out the window at the thousands of supporters gathered in Copley Square below. After lunch, the time had arrived to head to Fenway Park with De Valera standing in the back seat of a convertible automobile waving to the crowds that surrounded his car all the way to the park.

Jake:
[32:48] It took nearly three hours for this impromptu parade to deliver Dev to Fenway, a distance that Google Maps tells me would take 26 minutes to walk to day after

Impromptu Parade to Fenway Park

Jake:
[33:00] the pandemonium at Fenway Park. Devi again retreated to his hotel room with news reports saying that he was in bed by 9 p.m. This meant that he was fresh and rested for his historic tour on Monday morning, which would now include both the originally scheduled visit to Lexington and Concord and the tour of Cambridge and Charlestown that had been originally planned for Sunday afternoon before the speech at Fenway, his car was cheered into Cambridge picking up the mayor at City Hall before proceeding to Cambridge Common where the elm tree still stood in 1919, below which George Washington supposedly first took command of the continental army.

Jake:
[33:41] From there. It was out mass ave through Arlington to Lexington and Concord. Then on the way back, the party followed the route of Paul Revere’s ride in reverse. On July 1st, the New York Sun reported that they wound up at Bunker Hill. Mr de Valera placed a wreath beneath the historic elm in Cambridge, under which General Washington took command of the American Revolutionary Army. And another on the Minuteman Monument on the green in Lexington at the base of the bunker Hill monument, he placed a wreath in tribute to the men of Irish blood who fought there. Mr de Valera took from his pocket, a card on which he wrote the date in the words of Washington, when he learned that the battle of Bunker Hill had been fought, the liberties of my country are safe. He signed it and fastened it to the reef.

Speech at the Statehouse

Jake:
[34:32] From Bunker Hill. The motorcade proceeded to the statehouse arriving at 245. Since Senator mcknight had blocked De Valera from speaking in the Senate chamber. The house Chamber was overflowing with state representatives and senators and the galleries were packed with curious onlookers. As Dev entered waves of cheers broke out while the stars and stripes waved alongside green Irish Republican flags in the galleries. Speaker of the House Joseph Warner welcomed De Valera to the stage where he spoke on the mandate of the New Republic. As reported in the July 1st edition of the New York Sun.

Jake:
[35:12] It is said that the Irish are divided amongst themselves. This is not so in respect to this question, if we could get a plebiscite, we could carry it 4 to 1. Ulster is mentioned as an exception, but Ulster is a very small part of the island. In some parts of Ulster, there are very small majorities opposed and in others, the majority sympathizes with most of the people of Ireland. Minorities have a right to look for guarantees for the majority, but they have no right to be unreasonable today. The rights of the majority in Ireland are sacrificed to the minority of Ulster. Again, it is said that this is a religious question. This too is not. So it happens that the majority of the Ulster minority is protestant and that the majority of the Irish people is Catholic. But that has nothing to do with the present situation.

Jake:
[36:06] England has tried to keep alive this allegation of religious differences, but it will not be able to do so and the Irish people will be united in support of Irish sovereignty.

Jake:
[36:17] After this deliberate address, De Valera was whisked from the statehouse back to South Station just in time to catch a 530 train for New York. After arriving back at the Waldorf Astoria in that city, he extended his thanks to the people of New England with the July 2nd Boston Globe quoting Dev as saying,

De Valera’s Gratitude to New England

Jake:
[36:38] the cordial reception given me by the executive officers and people of the state of Massachusetts. And New Hampshire has convinced me that the people of America will not be content with sympathizing with the cause of Ireland in their hearts, but will seek an early opportunity of expressing it. Definitely an act through their executive head. I did not need to come to Boston or to America to know that Americans would not lend themselves to an act of injustice against an ancient nation that has clung to its traditions and maintained its spirit of independence through seven centuries of blood and tears, in the name of Ireland. I thank you.

Expansion of De Valera’s Tour

Jake:
[37:16] During his New England tour, Dev visited Providence, Rhode Island and Manchester, New Hampshire, as well as the Greater Boston area soon after regrouping in New York. However, he started an even more ambitious tour, de Valera and his party took a series of trains across the country from New York to San Diego, speaking in 56 cities along the way and thus laying the groundwork for a bond drive the following year that raised millions of dollars to support and arm the fledgling Irish Republic. Irish ambassador Daniel Mulhall, 2019 article about this tour notes, by the time De Valera arrived in the United States, American influence on Irish affairs was a well established reality, but he certainly added to it and huge crowds came out to hear him. During the 18 months, he spent traveling around the United States. His tour included appearances in Chicago, San Francisco and New York’s Madison Square Garden where he spoke in front of an estimated crowd of 50,000. He also visited less populous regions such as Montana and Utah. Unfortunately for President de Valera, the Irish Republic soon collapsed with the Irish Free State being set up in its place under the 1921 Anglo Irish treaty, creating exactly the sort of British protectorate in Ireland that De Valera had warned about on his US tour.

Jake:
[38:45] Ayman De Valera would remain an influential political leader for the rest of his life as a member of parliament, Prime Minister and finally president once more as the third president of the Republic of Ireland, starting in 1959,

De Valera’s Legacy and Influence

Jake:
[39:00] just in time to receive a state visit from John F. Kennedy, the US president who perhaps most thoroughly embraced his Irish American identity.

Jake:
[39:11] To learn more about Ayman De Valera Boston visit. Check out this week’s show notes at hubor.com/three 03. I’ll have links to all the news articles that I quoted from this week, including stories in the globe, the Springfield Union, the New York Sun, and Tribune, and several other papers because they’re old enough to be out of copyright. I’ll also include several pictures of Dev taken during his 1919 visit to Boston as well as a silent newsreel film from the British Path, a archive showing the crowds surrounding De Valera at Fenway Park. I’ll also link to the 2019 articles that I cited from ambassador Daniel Mulhall and the Irish Boston History and Heritage blog. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubor.com. We’re Hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and marginally most active on Twitter. If you’re on Mastodon, you can find me as at Hubor at better dot Boston or you can go to hubor.com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do drop me a line and I’ll send you a Huber sticker as a token of appreciation.

Jake:
[40:35] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.