'Keeping the flag flying? - The involvement of children in the Orange Order during its years of dissolution 1836-45' (original) (raw)

“Tie the Flags Together”: Migration, Nativism, and the Orange Order in the United States, 1840-1930

2018

Cory Wells Throughout the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Irish Protestants who migrated to the United States joined the Orange Order in their newly adopted country. Formed in Ulster in the 1790s, the Loyal Orange Institution existed to maintain Protestant hegemony in Ireland. It quickly spread throughout the anglophone Atlantic, especially to Britain and Canada. As the number of Irish Catholics immigrating to America steadily rose, reaching new heights during the Famine, so did the anti-immigrant rhetoric that culminated in the American nativist movement. While the history of the Orange Order has been given transnational treatment, to some extent, within the British Empire, its role in the United States is understudied. Why did Irish Protestants in the United States find maintaining their ties with anti-Catholic organizations, such as the Orange Order, and joining new ones, such as the America Protective Association, useful? Using a large collection of documents created by American Orangemen and-women, this study examines the ways in which Irish Protestants in the United States, through the Loyal Orange Institution, navigated the American political landscape while attempting to maintain their Irish Protestant identity. Its primary argument is that through the Orange Order, Irish Protestants were able to connect with American nativist organizations to assert themselves as patriotic, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, different from the growing waves of Irish Catholics coming to America's shores after the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the Orange Order's core tenets, based on its notions of "Protestant rights," were either identical or approximate enough to values shared by many Americans that they could be preserved with only moderate tempering. Irish Protestants iii migrated with tools for expressing anti-Catholic sentiments in hand and understood how to use these to assert themselves as patriotic Americans. At the same time, Irish Protestants were able to maintain much of their pre-migration identity, and the Orange Order provided a venue to do this. The Order was transnational, and members viewed themselves as a global community of brothers and sisters. As a social organization, the Order also allowed men and women to forge new networks based on their shared Orange identity. This, in turn, gave them access to migration networks and employment in their new homes, a sense of community, and even a place to find a spouse, while reinforcing an identity that was likewise predicated on the contrast between themselves and Irish Catholics at home and abroad. There are countless individuals without whom I could not have completed this work. I am indebted to the members of my committee, Kenyon Zimmer, Stephanie Cole, Christopher Morris, and Don MacRaild, for committing their time in reading and commenting on multiple drafts of each chapter and, most importantly, their insightful questions and suggestions, which helped me conceptualize this work. Any remaining errors are solely my own. Many other faculty members in the UTA history department have also greatly assisted me. Stanley Palmer, David Narrett, and John Garrigus were among those to give me early encouragement, while Kim Breuer, Sam Haynes, Gerald Saxon, Sarah Rose, and Andy Milson have given me help as they would their own students. Department chairs Marvin Dulaney and Scott Palmer have been most supportive of my work as a student. The history department office staff members over the previous seven years have been an immense help in administrative matters, from processing reimbursements to opening my office when I have locked myself out. Elisabeth Cawthon has offered upbeat and enthusiastic encouragement through the entire process as both a professor and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Assistant Dean Les Riding-In has also been instrumental in helping me acquire additional funding without which this project would not have come to fruition. Several other institutions and their staff have been essential in making this work possible. Brenda Davis, in UTA's Office of Graduate Studies, has been generous in helping me procure funding that allowed me to conduct transatlantic research and supported me through the final stages of writing. The Southern Conference on British Studies also provided me with funds that made research in Belfast possible. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania provided me with a Balch Research Fellowship, which allowed me to spend crucial time with much of the archival v material used in this study. I would like to especially thank Christina Larocco, Sarah Heim, and the rest of the staff at the HSP for their help. Other vital sources were obtained at the Orange Heritage Museum in Belfast, and I thank Jonathan Mattison for kindly making the Museum's records available. Over the course of my graduate career, I have made many friends-faculty and fellow students alike-who helped make what can be a lonely endeavor much more enjoyable. Kristen

Remembering Protest in Britain since 1500

2018

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: The Chartist Uprising Mosaic, Photograph reproduced by permission of Budd Mosaics. Original mosaic design by Kenneth Budd ARCA.

The persistence of nationalist and anti-state sentiment in Ulster, 1848-67

Between 1848 and 1867 in Ulster there existed numerous modes of political and social collective action which had their antecedents in pre-Famine developments and which Catholics continued to engage in. In these could be discerned nationalist and anti-state sentiment. Some of these forms were social rather than political in character. A curious mixture of associational Ribbonism and agrarianism had grown out of pre-Famine agrarian secret societies and Defenderism. This form of collective action reared its head in the south Armagh region of Ulster in the early part of the post-Famine years. Meanwhile, the popular anti-Orange action which Catholics had practiced during the times of the Armagh Troubles of the 1780s also persisted, especially in the Mourne region of south Down. The Ribbon societies were most prevalent on the province’s peripheries and in Belfast. Ribbonism lay somewhere between political network and social club. The Ribbonmen were vaguely nationalist, but certainly anti-state in outlook. They had adopted the mantle of Catholic defence and associational practice from the Defenders as early as 1811 and were still functioning in that role by the 1850s and 60s. Other modes of organisation were clearly political. The remnants of the Young Ireland movement, by 1847 known as the Irish Confederation, stood in the non-sectarian republican tradition of the United Irishmen. Though an entirely new phenomenon in many ways, the IRB and the Fenian movement from the early 1860s persisted in propagating the advanced nationalist ideology of the Young Irelanders who had come before them. Scholars such as W. E. Vaughan and R. V. Comerford have portrayed the post-Famine years as ones of Catholic political contentment with the Union and social contentment with the land system and Protestant hegemony. This proposed paper will argue to the contrary; that the continued survival of certain social modes of collective action and political traditions, though often a minority practice, restricted the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland and maintained foundations on which the more explicitly anti-imperial mass movements of Parnellism, Hibernianism and Republicanism could be built in subsequent years.