It was during the nineteenth century that the American Republic began to see itself emerge as a new diversified nation, incompatible with the old native structures. Recent migrants offered changing cultures and swelled the cities. Settlement programs, designed to cultivate the vast unpopulated regions of the North and West offered relief throughout the United States. It was in the decade following the civil war when the leaders in Minnesota hoped to attract new settlers. During the famine and after, millions of Irish had immigrated to the states but few had managed to reach Minnesota. Those who emigrated reluctantly held memories of crop failures and were unaccustomed to large scale farming techniques and could not be enticed to take up land. Efforts were made by Irish leaders in the states in particular the clergy to entice the Irish from the east coast to what was called the West and it was from the east and Canada that the first Irish settlers came to Minnesota, by 1850 some 263 people of Irish birth were counted in Minnesota territory.

The Catholic Church was largely responsible for promoting settlers to the Western states. The United States leading Irish colonizer was Archbishop John Ireland who was born in Ireland but brought up in America. In 1864 Ireland formed the Minnesota Irish immigration society to promote immigrant aid. With this venture, Ireland was unsuccessful but was not perturbed and within one month of him becoming Bishop he set up the Catholic Colonization Bureau with Dillon O'Brien editor of the Northwestern Chronicle as it's head. Ireland prevented speculators from buying up the land by becoming the sole agent for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. From 1876 to 1879 Ireland held contracts for 369,000 acres in southwestern and mid-central Minnesota. With a $400 minimum stake needed for a family for it's first year, it meant many poor Irish families were eliminated from the scheme. Those who took up Ireland's offer were from the Midwest and New England. The colonization scheme settled Irish in promising areas of good farm land within reach of their churches. The land was purchased at a rent while the railroad benefited by the sale of the land and the ensuing railroad custom; the Catholic Colonization Bureau earned the agent's fee of 10% and the satisfaction of developing the new territory as Catholic. Ireland started 10 farm towns that stretched along railroad routes from Adrian to Graceville. Bishop Ireland was not the only one interested in aiding the Irish; General James Shields, statesman and entrepreneur, who purchased the townsite of Faribault and selective lands in 1855 that later became known as Shieldsville, established one of the state's first organized colonies. More than 200 Irish families, mostly from the East coast settled in and around Shieldsville, paying $1.50 to $2.00 an acre for farms of 80 to 160 acres. Southeastern Minnesota became the first major Irish concentration in the state along the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. The Irish population in southeastern Minnesota peaked in 1870 at over 14,085. Not all immigrants were drawn to Minnesota in colonies. Some arrived as railroad workers. In 1880, 870 of railroad officials and employees were Irish constituting 6% of the total Irish labor force as well as 13.6% of the state's railroad employees.

The Irish did survive and develop in Minnesota even though they often were the minority group of the mostly prominent German and Norwegian presence. The state's capital St. Paul also became the Irish capital.

Irish History in America

One of the most startling aspects to note in Irish history in the nineteenth century is that Ireland lost almost half her population through emigration. The United States was the major destination of Irish emigrants and by 1870 about three-fifths of the expatriates were living there. Analysis for the period 1876-1895 shows that the emigrating Irish tended to come from counties, which had many Irish speakers with agricultural backgrounds.

Between 1856-1921 the number of people who emigrated was between 4.1 and 4.5 million of which perhaps some 3.5 million immigrated to North America. Several general conclusions are derived from official figures. The first conclusion being that the post famine exodus was mostly Catholic, secondly a large proportion of post famine emigrants were native Irish speakers. Thirdly, post-famine emigrants came largely from impoverished backgrounds thereby possessing fewer skills and little capital. In general it seems that the emigrants came from the Irish counties that were the least urbanized, contained the poorest farmland, where most of the inhabitants worked in non-agricultural occupations. In their favor it seems that post-famine emigrants were more literate than those that preceded them. Between 1851 and 1901 illiteracy fell among inhabitants over five years of age from 47 percent to 14 percent.

Overall the primary causes of the post-famine exodus remained the changing economic climate, social structures and cultural patterns of contemporary Ireland. The early 1860's were especially bad years for rural Ireland; unusually bad weather ruined pastures, cash crops, potatoes, and turf, in turn injuring grazers, commercial tillage farmers, subsistence cultivators and the like. Between 1861-1864 evictions increased 65 percent from the preceding four years. With many reasons to leave Ireland many companies ensured people were constantly reminded of the attraction of America. Intensive advertising campaigns were conducted by the competitive steamship companies employing thousands of shopkeepers, publicans and auctioneers as agents in the remotest of districts. In addition railroad companies in America and Canada employed Irish agents, issued handbills and advertised in newspapers to encourage Irish men and women. Although modernization was taking place in Ireland, this modernization that did occur not only failed to prevent emigration but also was in reality it's primary cause. The de-industrialization of rural Ireland had been well under way since before the famine and by 1891, 14 percent of the population remained in manufacturing and building with most concentrated in the east and northeast. Railroad improvements facilitated cheap, mass-produced goods from Britain and the United States unhindered by protective tariffs. In the 1870's depressed British industries dumped huge quantities of low cost goods on Irish markets and in the 1880's agricultural distress only reduced farmer's purchasing power. In 1861 about half a million landless still constituted one quarter of Ireland's population and between 1861 and 1914, land and livestock became increasingly compacted among a small minority of farmers. Still the western counties remained the most impoverished in 1861 with almost 80 percent of Connaught farms containing fewer than fifteen acres and over a fifth were below five acres. The commercialization of post-famine agriculture produced the greatest hardships and highest emigration rates. Finally emigration played a key role in restructuring rural society and culture, which in turn promoted further emigration. Other encouraging factors were the letters and remittance monies from family members in America to Ireland. These same letters told tales of great opportunity and often contained pre-paid passage tickets.

From 1740-1922 as many as seven million people emigrated from Ireland to North America. The Irish consistently regarded emigration as exile and this inhibited their adjustment to American life. It is remarkable that so few of these self-imposed exiles ever returned to Ireland compared to the sizeable return migration of Italians, Swedes, and Greek, who often returned home to the same repressive systems as Ireland, though few claimed to be exiles. It should be mentioned that not all Irish emigrants regarded themselves as exiles; there were those who went in search of improved economic and social opportunities.

During the colonial years and up to the nineteen century affluent Irish Catholics mingled easily with the wealthy but as an increasing amount of impoverished Irish began arriving after 1830 the prosperous well established Catholics began to feel the backlash. Some moved to places less populated by Irish while others attempted to improve the image of their impoverished countrymen by organizing temperance groups or by writing for the regional press. Leading Catholic gentlemen involved in the improvement of the Irish image could be found in every major city in the United States. Not all Irish were culturally constructive. From the 1830's, the massive influx of Irish became synonymous with crime, poverty, drunkenness and violence. Hostility grew between the Irish and other nationalities as Blacks became strike breakers denying the Irish their menial labor, while Germans who flocked to the Republican Party were cynically thought of as inferior by Irish writers, thus the Irish succeeded in many cities from isolating themselves from the non-Irish population. Irishmen who did not remain in the cities along the east coast and moved westward improved their occupational status more rapidly by becoming small farmers or by owning their own businesses. Little information is available on the occupational mobility patterns of women but some women did achieve impressive upward movement on the west coast by marrying non Irish merchants, this is accredited to the shortage of white women. Irish male death rates were high throughout the nineteenth century, poor living conditions, alcohol related diseases and dangerous laboring jobs all attributed to this. Females were more susceptible to tuberculosis and other respiratory problems, as such illnesses are related to unhygienic living conditions and poverty. As their numbers began to swell into urban areas after the 1840's, the established Anglo-American Protestants did not welcome the Irish Catholics. They were seen as a social plague overcrowding their cities with their filth and antisocial behavior, according to the historian Lawrence McCaffrey, burdening the jails, hospitals, asylums and the social welfare system. This Native hatred created mental as well as physical ghettos. The new immigrants suffered much hatred and bigotry, which encouraged the old idea of safety in numbers. The immigrant became a 'marginal man' neither Irish nor American. In 1844 mobs invaded the ghettos in Philadelphia, burning houses and blowing up their churches. Many American politicians used anti-Catholic rhetoric and encouraged naturism to gain votes. McCaffrey tells us that in 1854 an anti-Catholic secret society, the Order of the Star spangled Banner, became the American party. Their objectives included the restrictions of political office to native born, and limiting immigration.

By the early 1870's the Irish American began to rise above their destitution. The development of cheap transportation in the 1880's and 1890's offered escape to suburbia from working class slums. While growing political influence offered psychological respectability. By the 1880's literate immigrants and their children supported at least one Irish-American newspaper in every major city in the North and Midwest.