New York’s first St. Patrick’s Day Parades pre-dated the American Revolution and were conducted (ironically) by Irish conscripts serving in the British Army.  Until 1774 parading military units constituted the make-up of the parades as they were the only organizations authorized to hold such gatherings - otherwise seen as incitements to riot.  St. Patrick’s Day Parades were quickly adopted by the American Colonists as occasions to protest the policies of the English Crown in America. It should be no surprise that the Irish were among the most ardent supporters of the American Revolution, and large numbers of Irish volunteered for service in the Continental Army.7   Boston’s first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was held in 1776 and large St. Patrick’s Day Parades were held by Irish Continental Army troops in Philadelphia and New York the in the ensuing years.  A notable St. Patrick’s Day Parade was held by Irish units serving in the Continental Army at Valley Forge.  This event was authorized by George Washington in part to foster comradery and brotherhood among his soldiers and in part to counter latent anti-Catholic sentiment among elements of his beleaguered army.

Historians tell us that the American Revolution was in large measure a rising of the colonial aristocracy against the capricious edicts of King George III and the English parliament. Whatever else it might later become, the revolution was not intended to create an egalitarian society.  The planter aristocracy of the south and the Dutch/English mercantile classes of the north may have supplanted the ruling British monarchists, but America remained divided by both race and class.  The pre-revolutionary attitudes of the ruling classes towards the Irish remained largely unchanged.

Following the American Revolution and the failure of their own American inspired rebellion against British rule in 1798, successive waves of Irish immigrants came to the United States.   Between 1800 and 1840 more than a million additional Irish had arrived.8  Each migration was met with increasingly hostile anti-Irish and anti-Catholic agitation. Anti-Irish and Anti-catholic riots shook a number of eastern cities including New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Irish American Organizations including the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Shamrock Society sprang up to counter the growing anti-Irish sentiment.   (CARTOON #1)

The Eighteen Forties was the decade of the great Irish potato famine. Starting in 1845 and continuing through 1851 the potato crop - which had sustained more than 3 million of Ireland’s 8 million population - failed.15  British Government relief efforts were woefully inadequate. Before it was over more than a million had died and nearly two million fled Ireland forever - more than half of these coming to the United States and Canada.16  The floods of famine Irish that landed in America in the years preceding the Civil War were met with increasingly hostile nativist reaction throughout the East and gave birth to the anti-immigrant, anti Catholic “No Nothing Party” which swept to power in many eastern cities.  The Irish were characterized in the nativist press of the day as lazy, shiftless and unreliable. Editorials called the Irish: “a superstitious race, indolent, ignorant, violent and beyond rehabilitation.” After witnessing the wailing of Irish women mourning the loss of their husbands and sons in construction accident: the famous New York diarist George Templeton Strong wrote unsympathetically: “Our Celtic fellow citizens are almost as remote from us in temperament and constitution as the Chinese.”  17  It is not entirely a coincidence that the Irish and Chinese were linked by the diarist.  Cartoonists of the period, particularly Anglo supremacists like Thomas Nast were fond of drawing the Irish, Chinese and Africans as “missing links.”  (CARTOON #2)

It was during the period directly preceding the Civil War than Anti-Irish agitation was most virulent and was also during this period of extreme Anti Irish Bigotry that St. Patrick’s Day Parades were widely organized across the country to counter the nativist hysteria. By 1860 most of the major American Cities in the East had St. Patrick’s Day Parades.

THE IRISH IN THE AMERICAN WEST

The Irish who arrived between 1847 and 1860 did not find easy employment digging canals or working on the railroads as earlier Irish arrivals had done.  Most were forced to seek refuge by enlisting in the American army.  General Winfield Scott, commander of all American forces during the Mexican American war (1846-48) testified before congress that more than a third of the forces in that conflict were foreign born and two thirds of that number were Irish.19  Irish exiles also fought under the Mexican flag in the San Patricio battalions of the Mexican army. 20 On another front, Irish immigrants made up a large portion of The Utah Expeditionary Force - otherwise known as Johnson’s Army - during the Utah War 1858-59.

The First recorded St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations in Utah were held at Camp Floyde and Fairfield in Utah County.  The Camp Floyde Cemetery in Fairfield, Utah contains the graves of about 80 of General Johnston’s soldiers – more than a third of these were Irish born and more than half have Irish surnames.  Many Irish Americans in the west today can trace their lineage to Irish soldiers brought west in the military expansion of the country. As in the east, St. Patrick’s Day events were held in many western cities before the Civil War. One of the largest was the annual St. Patrick’s Parade in San Francisco first held in 1855.

COL. PATRICK CONNOR

With the approach of the Civil War, the Utah Expeditionary force was withdrawn and most of the soldiers returned to the east. But the Federal government continued to be wary of Mormon intentions and, within a year, a force of 750 volunteers from California and Nevada was on its way to Utah under the command of Col. Patrick Edward Connor. Col. Conner was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1820 in County Kerry, Ireland. In 1836 he immigrated with his parents to New York. At the age of 19 he enlisted in the First U.S. Dragoons and served in Florida and Texas before the Mexican American War. At the start of that conflict he was given a commission as a lieutenant in the Texas Foot Riflemen then commanded by Albert Sidney Johnson. He served in Mexico with the Texas volunteers of General Wood's Army under Zachary Taylor. Connor rose to the rank of captain and commanded a company of infantry at the battle of Buena Vista, for which he received commendations for bravery and leadership.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Governor Downey of California offered command of a   California infantry regiment to fellow Irishman, Patrick E. Connor. Col. Connor raised and organized much of the Third California Infantry. It is not surprising that a large number of the men in the regiment were Irish. This was not unusual. Over 144,000 Irish immigrants would serve in the Union Armies during the Civil War. It was unusual to have Irish officers commanding nearly every company. The officers that Col. Connor would command in Utah included: Major Patrick Gallagher, Major J. B Moore, Major Nicolas O'Brian, Captains McKean, and Mathewson and Lieutenants Clark, Quinn, Murray, and Egan. But this was an unusual regiment, the equivalent of the Irish brigades in some Federal and Confederate armies in the east.

WESTERN SAINT PATRICK’S DAY CELEBRATIONS:

While his troops were still in training in Stockton, California, Connor was invited by Governor Downey to lead the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in San Francisco. Conner brought 20 of his officers and the regimental band to the parade. The San Francisco papers gave great play to the participation of Connor's troops. The parade also included many Irish organizations: the Irish American Benevolent Society, St. Patrick's Brotherhood, and the Sons of Erin. After the grand parade, a high mass was celebrated at St. Mary's Cathedral. In the evening there was a grand ball at Hayes Park with speeches, orations, recitations and parties that went on until the wee hours of the morning. The festivities of that St. Patrick's Day, 1862 in San Francisco, would be the model for St. Patrick's Day celebrations that Connor would foist on the citizen's of an incredulous Salt Lake City, in the years to come.

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were held every year during General Connor’s term of command at Fort Douglas. They were often huge gaudy affairs patterned closely after the San Francisco Parade that preceded the Third California Infantry's departure for Utah. The shenanigans of the exuberant Irish were often viewed by the local inhabitants as insulting provocations. A typical slate of Saint Patrick's Day activities was described in The Union Vedette, the camps newspaper. The day included speeches, balls, parties, public orations, commemorations and a procession though the streets of Salt Lake City by the entire military contingent at Fort Douglas.

General Connor and his troops remained at Fort Douglas for some time following the end of the Civil War in 1865. Most of Connor’s original command were mustered out of the army in 1866 and 67 – many finding employment working on the Transcontinental Railroad. Connor himself would temporarily retire from military service in 1868 to engage in a number of business and mining opportunities including the establishment of an ore hauling steamship company on the Great Salt Lake.  The Deseret News seemed to rejoice in the reduction of the Fort Douglas garrison and reveled in the temporary departure of the Irish. On March 18,th 1869 the paper mocked Connor's new enterprises and reveled in the temporary disappearance of the Irish:

THE SEVENTEENTH OF IRELAND, or St. Patrick’s Day, yesterday, was a very tame affair in this city. Not even a drunk was reported on the police docket. In former years when the bold sons of Erin commanded the "sojer boys" on the bench considerable to-do was generally kicked up on the l?° of March, bands were out and the military paraded through the streets of this city preceded by a large green flag, the emblem of Old Ireland, which cast into the shade "entirely" the renowned grid-iron of Uncle Sam. But the "Jineral" has been extinguished, or at least subsided to flatboat "Cap'n", Othello like, his occupation in the military line gone, and his bold compatriots now find more peaceful and useful occupation at their old trade working on the railroad. Hence there was no 17' of Ireland here yesterday.

Deseret News Salt Lake City, Ut. Ten.

March 18'", 1869