They came running away from death and suffering to a new land offering freedom and life. "In the ten-year period from the beginning of the Great Famine in 1845 to the end in 1854, nearly a million and a half Irish immigrants arrived in the United States" (McCaffrey 62). But these immigrants were treated no differently than those that had come to the New World years before them. .
Although most of the immigrants came from a rural background, most settled in urban areas where they hoped to find work. Most were unskilled in the jobs that were found in cities. Hence, they were on the bottom of the economic ladder as manual laborers. The Irish were labeled lazy and unreliable and had many problems finding jobs, often finding themselves competing with slaves for employment. When the Irish were in their homeland, they had sympathy for the blacks and even voiced their opinions about slavery. But once they arrived in America and were thought of as a lesser race than the slaves, their sympathy soon turned to hatred. Little did they know that they had many common experiences with the black race:.
Practically every accusation that has been made against .
the American blacks was also made against the Irish: Their .
family life was inferior, they had no ambition, they did not keep .
up their homes, they drank too much, they were not responsible, .
they had no morals, it was not safe to walk through their .
neighborhoods at night, they voted the way crooked politicians .
told them to vote, they were not willing to pull themselves .
up by their bootstraps, they were not capable of education, .
they could not think for themselves, and they would always .
remain social problems for the rest of the country (Greenley 119).
But the common way that the colonists viewed the two racial groups did not help to bond them in unity. The Irish's hatred for the blacks soon became even more prevalent when mob riots broke out and took hundreds of civilians in their death count.
