Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

By Terry Golway

Ebook

Love this so far.

The failire of the potato crop brought Irish immigrants to America by the thousands.

There were several schemes afoot to blame the "unworthy poor" for their disasterous plight. I especially like this,"A new publication called The Economist insisted that government interference in the distribution of food would only transfer resources “from the more meritorious to the less.” Fox News wasn't born yet but this sounds just like them.

14% "Dagger" John Huhhes and the Tammany men were more than happy to round up the starving newly arrived Irish masses and help turn them into a voting block.

Golway calls it an "Irish Diapsora" This from Wiki' "The diaspora to America was immortalised in the words of many songs including the famous Irish ballad, "The Green Fields of America":

So pack up your sea-stores, consider no longer,

Ten dollars a week is not very bad pay,

With no taxes or tithes to devour up your wages,

When you're on the green fields of Americay.

The Irish changed everything in America by sheer force of numbers alone. They felt that they were deliberately starved by Queen Victoria whom the refered to as the "Famine Queen" 

In the 1850's the Irish and their Mayor Fernando Wood dominated. This was the era of the gang like the Dead Rabbitts who battled others in NYC's notorious Five Points district. Nativists like the Know Nothings were ever present as well. 

None could see that the coming years wo7ld see change like none before in NYC.

21.8%

Books: 

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (The Hinges of History) by Thomas Cahill