When American poet Emma Lazarus wrote the iconic words that would be inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”—she certainly had the Irish in mind. The Irish immigrants that arrived on America’s shores in the mid-19th century came with nothing more than the shirts on their backs, having fled their home country to escape starvation. They crowded into American cities where the living conditions were wretched—filthy, teeming slums that were breeding grounds for disease and death. But the story of the Irish in America wouldn’t be one of misery and despair. No, it would be one of hope and triumph, as the Irish would become one of the country’s greatest immigrant success stories.
The Irish came to America under the most horrific of circumstances. The potato was the lifeblood of the Irish people. They depended on it for their daily existence, and when a mysterious fungus appeared on the potato after a wet summer in 1845, it spelled their doom. The crop failed repeatedly and disastrously over the next six years. Over 1 million Irish would starve to death, while another million would flee the country and head to America—their last and only hope. The Great Famine was perhaps the worst human catastrophe of the 19th century. Ireland, which had 8.1 million people in 1840, would have only 6.5 million by the end of the decade. By 1860, another million would leave for America.
