The Great Famine

Devastation and British and American Responses

By Madelon Proctor

In the fall of 1845, Ireland’s potato crop came under the attack of an unknown scourge. The potato was the primary source of nourishment for almost thirty percent of the island’s inhabitants, and its devastation brought added hardship and misery to an already struggling people. Although the British government attempted to alleviate the suffering, long-held animosity and mistrust coming from both sides of the Irish Sea colored its allocation and its receipt. The Irish left their homeland in droves, seeking a sustainable life in new countries; upwards of one million found their new home in the United States.^[1]

Whereas English leaders maintained an ideology of laissez faire and relief services remained largely superficial and rife with obligation, aid from America came with no preconceptions and no strings attached for the Irish.^[2] The British believed poverty came of slothfulness, drunkenness, and sexual immorality.^[3] Additionally, religious intolerances influenced the decisions of Protestant England over its primarily Catholic holding, and some Britons went so far as to state that the famine was an act of God as means to punish the Irish for their popery.^[4] Government agents enacted policies intended to mitigate the effects of the famine, yet old struggles and new challenges developed under their plans. Famine victims brought stories of their experiences with them across the Atlantic, and citizens of the United States took stories of Irish suffering to heart. They loaded food and provisions from across America onto numerous ships bound for the small island.^[5]

The early nineteenth century saw immense population growth throughout Europe – none more than in Ireland. While British troops fought Napoleon, though, Ireland’s crops and grains were in high demand for the empire, and those wars with France brought relative prosperity to the island. “Napoleon was the best friend the Irish farmer ever had…Waterloo brought an end to the happy times.” ^[6] By 184,5 the country was home to more than eight and a half million people, and the tenant system put in place by its English landlords encouraged profit over productivity and sustainability. Penal Laws enacted by Great Britain prohibited those of Catholic faith from owning land, restricting the property ownership rights of about eighty percent of Ireland’s citizenry. The country’s farmland was primarily under the ownership of Protestant English landlords, some of whom continued to reside back in their mother country. These absentee landlords rented plots to farmers who, in turn, sublet portions for smaller farms. Diminished parcels of arable land were further sublet for poorer and poorer tenants, some with plots smaller than an acre. The poorest families in Ireland, the laboring class, had only enough land to grow a plot of potatoes for subsistence.^[7]

The potato was a vitamin-rich, highly nutritious, and compact food. It was cheap to grow, required very little space in family gardens, and a single seed potato might yield as many as six tubers in the next growing season. Cash crops like wheat and oats, cattle bred for beef, sheep for mutton and wool, and pigs were sold to pay the increasing rents landlords required. The laboring class relied on wages earned bringing in the crops at harvest to pay their rents, and the smallest farmers produced only enough crops for their payments – often not earning enough even for that. People planted crops anywhere they could to yield greater and greater harvests as rents rose at an unprecedented rate. “People were forced from want to promise any rent.”^[8] The compact versatility of the potato enabled tenants struggling to pay their proprietor to have a hearty meal at the table for their families. Most of Ireland’s poorest residents began to rely on the tuber as their only source of nutrition.^[9]

Reliance on a single crop, staggering rents, a significant reduction of available land, and the neglect of absentee landlords to improve holdings contributed to the effects of the potato blight as it reached Ireland’s shores. “For three weeks in August, heavy rains fell every day” after the particularly hot July of 1845.^[10] Having “heard reports about potato fields that had blackened overnight in some parts of Ireland,” farmers watched their crops closely for any “signs of decay.”^[11] The early crop of “new potatoes,” brought up in August, was healthy and families placed them for storage in cellars to last them until the late harvest, the “old potatoes,” in October.^[12] As fall progressed, the weather continued its capriciousness and, according to a farmer from County Wicklow called Mr. Foley, one October day the sky darkened with a thick fog and “the people went to bed in fear and dread that some great calamity was about to befall them.”^[13] When they rose the next morning, the plants in their fields were covered in black spots and the air was filled with the stench of rot and mold. After digging up the plants the people discovered “the potatoes were rotten, black, and slimy,” having putrefied in the ground.^[14]

Although potato crops had failed in Ireland previously, those had been contained in smaller areas or only a few counties.^[15] The people of Ireland looked for a cause of the devastation and many determined it to be the work of fairies. “They said that the dark sky occurred because the different fairy tribes were battling over the potatoes. Each tribe wanted the potatoes for themselves.”^[16] It was not until sixteen years later the true “origins of the blight were recognized” as the fungus Phytophthora Infestans.^[17] Thriving in the excessively wet climate in Ireland in the years 1845 through 1849, the spores of P. Infestans spread easily, infecting field after field and decimating the potato crops of the island. Having probably originated in Mexico, the fungus was transported by ship to Europe in guano intended to fertilize various crops there.^[18] Quickly travelling across the continent, it made its way to England and then to Ireland, bringing devastation and ruin to potatoes as it went.

The potato blight struck Ireland late in the year 1845 and the Great Famine truly took hold by February 1846. It wasn’t until 1852 that the last effects of the blight were felt. Phytophthora Infestans did not affect grain crops or interfere with the pastures for animals; instead, it attacked the staple food source of the poorest people in Ireland, the potato, with tenacious vehemence. Those living in port cities might see shops whose shelves were loaded with food and ships whose hulls contained an abundance of grain to feed the people of England.^[19] The wheat, barley, and oats they reaped in Irish fields went wholly to pay exorbitant rents, leaving little cash to purchase food. The people of Ireland sold everything they had of any value in hopes the blight would not recur with the next harvest. Their condition worsened with each passing day. With famine came pestilence and disease.^[20] Various scientific experts concocted ways for the starving populace to prepare rotten tubers or to salvage infected plants, the consumption of which wreaked havoc on peasants’ already weak digestive tracts. Dysentery was a common ailment for famine victims, but as conditions worsened “famine fever” became more and more prevalent – together, “fever and dysentery almost always proved fatal.”^[21]

Unable to provide their families with safe food, suffering from sickness and want, the people turned to the British government for help. Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel and Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Charles Trevelyan initiated British aid through the institution of programs like workhouses and publicly sponsored works projects.^[22] Workhouses were mandated to be funded by Irish rate payers, the landlords, who increased rents to meet the demands. Men declared pauper status to gain entrance and had to bring families to live in the ill-kept houses with them. Most workhouses only maintained about half capacity in the first years of famine, but as it wore on, the Irish grew willing to suffer the humiliation for want of food. Projects like the building of roads, bridges, and canals were sponsored by Parliament but also funded by Ireland’s landholders. Initially, loans financing the construction of roads only required landed men to repay half, but that half-grant system fell away as demand for especially unnecessary or ill-planned roads poured in. In addition to work requirements, the government reenacted the Irish Sustainability Loan Fund instituted during prior times of famine in that country. Recipients had to provide evidence of some kind of surety, such as a guarantor, and the loan would incur interest.^[23]

The British Parliament thought providing means of employment would teach the poverty-stricken Irish a better work ethic, instill lessons in morality and right living, and provide them with money to pay for their own food. However, due to higher-than-normal demand for Irish grain and meats in England and on the European continent, food prices began to increase rapidly, and it was difficult to receive imported goods. British Corn Laws placed high tariffs on imported grains from lands outside of the Empire. Meant to protect the interests of Great Britain, they instead deterred merchants from bringing goods into Ireland during this time of great need. Trevelyan believed high prices would help to bring more competition into the market, nevertheless it kept many goods out of the hands of those who needed them most.^[24]

The low wages men earned at workhouses and through the government projects were rarely enough to provide for the laborer himself, let alone his family. Sons, mothers, and daughters soon joined fathers at physically draining jobs splitting rocks or laying down roads. Yet, they still could not obtain enough food. English papers expressed “near-universal sympathy in 1845,” and called for provisions to be sent to the Irish.^[25] Realizing that the Corn Laws did not specifically inhibit the importation of Indian Corn, Prime Minister Peel secretly ordered a large quantity from the United States to distribute to Ireland’s poor. Dispensed to churches and government-sponsored aid groups, the corn was intended to be sold at cost to people who could prove their need was great.^[26]

Upon receipt of the tough, Indian Corn, many were so hungry they tried to eat it immediately. It did not take long to realize that corn might not be an adequate substitute for people used to eating only potatoes. Hard and sharp, Indian Corn ripped through some peasant’s intestines before the Irish learned how to prepare it properly. Before using it as flour, it needed to be ground twice in special corn grinding equipment. Given the moniker, “‘Peel’s Brimstone’ because of its yellow color and its hellish effects on the digestive system,” Indian Corn “spared the Irish from the worst effects of the 1845 potato failure.”^[27] The consequences of famine wracked Ireland for over half a decade, and after years of hearing about the suffering, English papers were affected with “near indifference.”^[28] Indifference turned to outrage at the Young Irelander Rebellion in 1848, and English papers depicted that fury clearly. The people of England were especially angry when they considered the assistance their dependency required of them. Sympathy for Ireland’s plight had turned to “‘compassion fatigue’ and suspicion” even as early as 1846, when the first recurrence of the blight affected a greater portion of the island, and an even bigger need grew apparent.^[29]

Horrible and grotesque stories about Ireland’s troubles were well known in English homes, but many people thought they were exaggerations, greatly embellished tales to obtain government handouts. On December 19, 1846, having heard about the suffering in the western parts of Ireland and wanting to see for himself the validity of the claims, “Mr. Cummins, a magistrate of the county of Cork,” visited Skibbereen.^[30] He related his travels to the Duke of Wellington: his encounters with a family, sick with fever though still alive, appearing as a pile of skeletons and heaped on a bed of straw; a woman with a newborn baby, both covered with a single, filthy sack for clothing; “two frozen corpses…half devoured by rats” in a boarded up house; and a feverish mother carrying her deceased, 12-year-old daughter outside and covering her with rocks.^[31] By the first of January that paper began reporting plans to “facilitate the emigration of persons above the class of paupers, and that persons, destitute of means,” would be sent to other British colonies “at the expense of the State.”^[32]

Over two million people chose to leave Ireland during the Great Famine, many beginning their journey by sailing to Liverpool, a primary hub for Irish immigration. From Liverpool, many emigrants chose to sail on to Canada and the United States. The government sent paupers, guilty of unpaid debts or petty crimes, to Australia and other victims of the famine to Canada, when it had funding. Landlords, too, paid passage for evicted tenants so they might regain possession of their lands and convert them to pasture, cattle being more profitable than people. Conditions on Atlantic voyages were appalling, and twenty to fifty percent of passengers died at sea. Ships carrying emigrants became known as “Coffin Ships” because of the likelihood of death before reaching the North American Continent. Journeying with the people of Ireland were tales of their lives back home, and when they arrived in the United States those stories inspired immense sympathy.^[33]

Although initial news about the famine settled in the periphery of American sentiments, its mishandling by the British caught the attention of champions for Manifest Destiny.^[34] Embroiled in its own struggle with Mexico after the annexation of Texas in December 1845, the United States was grappling over discussions of expansionism, empire, slavery, and abolition. Politicians paid little heed to what was happening across the Atlantic until, aspiring for empire, the country’s leaders began to look at Britain’s interests in Ireland as an example of what not to do with empirical holdings. By early 1847, headlines calling for “Relief for Ireland” and “Donations for the Starving People of Ireland” appeared in papers from New England to Georgia, Louisiana to Michigan, into the Wisconsin territory, and west to the brand-new state of Iowa.^[35]

With President James K. Polk’s declaration of war on Mexico in May 1846, opponents of expansion, particularly to the extension of slavery into conquered territory, grew more vocal. Champions of the abolition movement saw English landlordism and the denigration of the Irish as akin to slavery, and many Americans saw compassion and generosity to the Irish as a way to advance the cause of Christianity and be the hand of God in the world. For example, quoting a speech made by S.S. Prentiss in New Orleans, The Lancaster Examiner printed the following excerpt:

Give then, generously and freely. Recollect that in so doing you are exercising one of the most god-like qualities of your nature, and at the same time enjoying one of the greatest luxuries of life. We ought to thank our Maker that he has permitted us to exercise equally with himself that noblest of even the Divine attributes, benevolence. Go home and look at your family, smiling in rosy health, and then think of the pale, famine-pinched cheeks of the poor children of Ireland; and I know you will give according to your store, even as a bountiful Providence has given to you – not grudgingly, but with an open hand; for the quality of benevolence, like that of mercy,

‘Is not strained,
It droppeth like the gentle rain from Heaven,
Upon the place beneath: It is twice blessed,
It blesses him that gives, and him that takes.’^[36]

Three bills came to Congressional tables for discussion at the behest of the Committee for the Relief of the Suffering Poor of Ireland. Two philanthropic missions carrying food to that troubled country requested the use of battleships refitted for peaceful delegations. The third appeal to that governing body proposed a large sum of money be sent from the United States treasury for the relief of Ireland. Boston asked for the use of the U.S.S. Jamestown, commanded by Robert Bennet Forbes; New York sought the use of the U.S.S. Macedonian, to be piloted by George C. de Kay; and Kentucky Senator John Crittenden solicited $500,000 for the purchase of food for the Scottish and Irish.

On February 26, 1847, Congress began a debate about the Constitutionality of providing American aid to a foreign country. Ideas came up suggesting it was a national responsibility to offer assistance and foster goodwill in the world. Some senators envisioned America’s ascension in a global bid for power as tied to this benevolent action. The funding bill passed the Senate but failed to get through the House of Representatives. The two ship bills were formed into a joint resolution, however, and came out of both houses.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Navy be, and he is hereby, authorized to place at the disposal of Captain George C. De Kay, of New Jersey, the United States ship Macedonian, for the purpose of transporting to the famishing poor of Ireland and Scotland such contributions as may be made for their relief; and that the said Secretary be also authorized to place at the disposal of Captain Robert B. Forbes, of Boston, the United States sloop-of-war the Jamestown, for like purpose; or, if the Secretary shall be of the opinion that the public interest will be better subserved thereby, he is authorized to dispatch said vessels upon the service aforesaid as public ships.^[37]

The U.S.S. Jamestown set sail on March 28 from the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor; it was the first humanitarian mission of the United States. Almost every aspect of its preparation inspired volunteer labor, waived charges, and donated expertise. After receiving Congressional approval, volunteers from the Boston Aid Society began loading the vessel with donations from across the country. Work commenced on March 17, 1847, Saint Patrick’s Day, and the workforce was primarily of Irish descent. “Many Americans were frustrated by the polarizing Mexican War and the ongoing acerbic North-South debates about slavery and perhaps found in Ireland's woes both a cause for unity and a release of tensions.”^[38] The project inspired Americans to give altruistically to relieve the suffering Irish no matter the religion, creed, race, profession, gender, or social standing of the giver. The ship carried “corn, not cannon,” on this “voyage of mercy.”^[39]

After an uneventful passage across the Atlantic, the Jamestown made it to Cork on April 12, 1847, and the Macedonian followed soon after. Over the next year another one hundred twelve ships sailed for the British Isles with donated food from every state in the Union, and even some from its territories. The famine relief efforts brought together people from the North and the South, the East and the West. Donations came from both free and enslaved members of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. The Choctaw Nation, from their new reservation homes after having suffered removal from ancestral homelands, sent $710. Farmers, factory workers, teachers, and politicians sent something; even President Polk sent $50 from his personal accounts. The famine unified Americans in a time of political and social disunity and set a precedent for philanthropy and altruism for the country.^[40]

Ireland’s Great Famine, beginning around the year 1845 and continuing through 1852, changed the demography of the island and initiated the spread of her people throughout the globe. The country’s history is fraught with struggle and adversity, but not many stories of that past catch heartstrings like those of famine victims. Stricken by years of potato blight and disease, the Irish were starving, and the British government failed to enact adequate policies for their aid. Descriptions of hardship and privation travelled to the United States with its fleeing survivors and Americans engaged in a mission to provide food and other provisions to Ireland. Beginning with the voyage of the U.S.S Jamestown in March 1847, an estimated one hundred fourteen ships travelled across the Atlantic for the relief effort. Americans sympathized with the sufferings of the Irish people and stood together to bring them some merciful relief.

[1] Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012), 210.

[2] Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine 1845-1850 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 45

[3] John Kelly, The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People (London: Faber & Faber, 2012), 90

[4] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 60-61

[5] Stephen Puleo, Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020), 216

[6] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 8

[7] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 7-9 and 18-21

[8] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 8

[9] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 22-26

[10] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 3

[11] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 4

[12] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 6

[13] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 7

[14] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 7

[15] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 10-11

[16] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 8

[17] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 33

[18] Rich in nitrates, fecal matter added essential nutrients to the ground after each harvest season and allowed for depleted fields to produce rich crops even with heavy use. The mid-nineteenth century saw the annexation of islands, uninhabitable by anything except sea birds who covered the rocky shores with guano, to provide needed fertilizers to farmers around the world.
- Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020)

[19] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 58-63

[20] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 53

[21] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 225

[22] As Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Trevelyan was placed in charge of the government’s response to the famine

[23] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 88-105

[24] Kelly, The Graves are Walking, 38-39

[25] Michael Foley, Death in Every Paragraph: Journalism and the Great Irish Famine (Hamden, CT: Quinnipiac University Press, 2015), 37

[26] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes, 46-48

[27] Bartoletti, Black Potatoes. 50-55

[28] Foley, Death in Every Paragraph, 37.

[29] Foley, Death in Every Paragraph, 37.

[30] “Ireland. The Famine,” The Essex Standard, and Eastern Counties’ Advertiser (Colchester, Essex, England), December 25, 1846

[31] “Ireland. The Famine,” The Essex Standard, and Eastern Counties’ Advertiser (Colchester, Essex, England), December 25, 1846

[32] “Ireland. The Famine,” The Essex Standard, and Eastern Counties’ Advertiser (Colchester, Essex, England ), January 1, 1847

[33] Hegarty, The Story of Ireland, 205-214

[34] Manifest Destiny is “the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.” (https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/)

[35] “Relief for Ireland,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York, New York), March 1, 1847
A search on Newspapers.com for the year 1847 brings up 4573 results for this phrase, 281 of which come up for the state of New York. In 1848 there are only 538 hits for the same phrase.

- “Donations for the Starving People of Ireland” The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), April 9, 1847
A search on Newspapers.com for the year 1847 brings up 1470 results for this phrase. In 1848 matches are reduced to 412 for the same phrase.

[36] “A Beautiful and Thrilling Speech was Made…” The Lancaster Examiner (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), February 24, 1847

[37] US Congress. House. A Resolution authorizing the employment of the United States Ships Macedonian and Jamestown in transporting Provisions for the famishing Poor of Ireland and Scotland. HR 10, 29^th Cong., 2^nd sess. Approved March 3, 1847. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-9/pdf/STATUTE-9-Pg206-3.pdf

[38] Puleo, Voyage of Mercy, 127

[39] Puleo, Voyage of Mercy, 15

[40] Puleo, Voyage of Mercy, 135-147