A Day-After-St. Patrick’s Day post: On January 3, 1879, former President Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Dublin, Ireland for a visit to his ancestral homeland. According to J. Russell Young in his 1879 “Around the World with General Grant,” Dublin’s Lord Mayor warmly welcomed Grant “to the green shore of Ireland in the name of its citizens,” and presented to Grant a certificate making him a citizen of the city. Grant responded that he was “proud to be made a citizen of the great city,” and noted, “I am by birth a citizen of a country where there are more Irishmen, either native born or the descendants of Irishmen, than there are in all Ireland.” Grant also visited Londonderry and Belfast, where Young wrote, “at the immense ship-yard where the ‘White Star’ steamers were built, the workmen, numbering two thousand gathered around General Grant’s carriage, and cheered as they ran alongside.” It was at these shipyards that just a few decades later the ill-fated “Titanic” would be built. Young’s account of Grant’s visit to Ireland tells us of the “immense crowds” who greeted the former President, and of the “enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome.” What Young does not report, however, is that not all Irishmen were so welcoming. Grant had expected to visit Cork, but learned he would not be well-received there. According to Bernadette Whelan, Senior Lecturer in history at the University of Limerick, “Grant was a Republican, the party which the heavily Irish-American-dominated Democratic Party regarded as pro-British, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant. But it was his education policy (Grant believed that federal funding should not be used to run religious schools) that upset the Cork politicians, as it had his Democratic opponents and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.” historyireland/18th-19th-century-history/president-ulysses-s-grants-irish-tour-1879/ The farm cottage in County Tyrone, where Grant’s maternal great-grandfather, John Simpson, was born has been restored and is open to the public for visits. There is even a small Civil War exhibit. See here for more photos: irelandtravelkit/president-grant-ancestral-home-dungannon-co-tyrone/
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:03:07 +0000