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"The Herald of Relief from America"
No caption
This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast depicts American relief
arriving for those suffering from the Irish famine of 1879-1880.
In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, Ireland's population
doubled to 8,000,000, as the potato became the colony's staple crop.
Between 1845 and 1852, a devastating potato blight and the resultant famine in
Ireland were responsible for the deaths of 1,000,000 and the emigration of
1,500,000 to the United States, Canada, and other areas of the British Empire;
in all, over a quarter of the population was directly affected by the potato
famine.
There were subsequent food shortages and famines over the years, but the
potato famine in 1879-1880 was especially severe. Blight caused failure of
most of the potato crop, cheap prices on American corn drove down the market
price of the limited harvestable potatoes, and evictions of tenant farmers (as
in other famine years) were common. Until the turn of the century, the
vast majority of Irish farm land (97% in 1870) was owned by men who rented the
land to tenant farmers, not by those who cultivated the land themselves.
Land ownership was also concentrated in the hands of a few; in 1870, only 750
families owned 50% of the land in Ireland.
In 1879, Michael Davitt, a Fenian (militant Irish nationalist),
formed the Irish National Land League, with Charles Stewart Parnell, a member of
Parliament and a constitutional nationalist, as its president. The Land
League organized agitation throughout Ireland for an end to evictions and a
radical change in the land system to allow tenants to become landowners.
To enforce uniform compliance with their goals, the Land League convinced people
to shun those tenants, land agents, and landlords who failed to
cooperate. This tactic was first used against Charles Boycott, a land
agent, and became known as "boycotting." Mounting tensions
culminated in the Land War of 1879-1882. The election in 1880 of William
Gladstone as prime minister ushered in a change in Britain's Irish policy.
In 1881, Parliament enacted the Land Act, which guaranteed fair rents and made
it possible for tenants to buy the land they farmed.
American newspapers gave significant coverage to the Irish
Famine of 1879-1880. James Redpath, a journalist for the New York
Tribune, contributed vivid, moving reports of the misery in Ireland, urging
Americans to contribute to Irish relief funds. The Irish Famine was a
major story in Harper's Weekly in the early months of 1880, with lengthy
illustrated articles explaining the history and circumstances of landownership
and famine in Ireland. The journal expressed confidence in American
generosity: "America is not slow to respond to a call for
bread." The primary coordinator in the United States for famine
relief was the New York Herald, celebrated in this cartoon as "The Herald
of Relief from America." The newspaper collected over $200,000 by
late February 1880. On March 27, 1880, the U.S. Department of Navy
dispatched the U.S.S. Constellation to Ireland with over 3300 barrel of
foodstuffs, plus articles of clothing.
In this cartoon, the feminine symbol of Ireland (foreground) and
the Irish people (background) wave white handkerchiefs of distress, signaling
American ships transporting the Herald's relief collection to Eire's
rocky shore. In the right-foreground, an emaciated Irish family huddles
together, as the emblematic Irish Harp has toppled over to the ground. In
the right-background, the spirit of death hovers in the sky over the Irish
people.
Robert C. Kennedy
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