More than a century ago, another noted U.S. Republican presidential aspirant, Ulysses S. Grant, traveled to Ireland, also stirring controversy. Interestingly, much of the baggage George W. Bush brings ashore remains the same as Grant carried: relations with Britain, a lackluster economy, a looming election, and the role of parochial education, albeit with a twist.
The GOP in Ireland: 125 years later, still sharing some baggage
By Gerry Regan
White House Photo/Paul Morse George Bush and Tony Blair in Belfast in April 2003.
NEW YORK -- George W. Bush will be traveling a path well trod by U.S. presidents when he visits the Republic of Ireland on June 25. Richard Nixon visited in 1970, and Ronald Reagan in 1984. Democrat John F. Kennedy visited in 1963. And of course, Democrat Bill Clinton made three trips to the Emerald Isle during his two terms.
But the path blazer is Republican Ulysses Simpson Grant, who visited Dublin, Belfast, and Derry, in a five-day visit in 1879, two years after his two-term presidency ended.
Arguably, 125 years later, the Republican party of Grant and Abraham Lincoln, its first victorious candidate, bears little resemblance to the party once led by Nixon, Reagan, and today by Bush. But that aside, a look at the visits by Grant and Bush to Ireland, albeit separated by 125 years, illustrates both striking similarities as well as polar differences in their circumstances and positions.
Many in the Irish-American community perceived Grant, the commander of the victorious Union forces during America's Civil War, as a supporter of Great Britain, at the expense of Irish independence. In the Reconstruction era that followed the war, many Irish immigrants still blamed the British for the ravages of The Great Famine and the further indignity of British rule. The Democratic Party, the party then of corruption czar Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, heavily courted Irish immigrants, who were very skeptical about the benefits of the nativism, "old money," and black emancipation they associated with the Republicans.
Many Irish-Americans perceived Grant as a supporter of Great Britain, at the expense of Irish independence.
As president, the famed warrior Grant forged the peaceful settlement of the Alabama claims with Britain, whereby Britain agreed to pay the United States $15.5 million to compensate it for the Federal shipping destroyed by British-built Confederate ships. In averting armed conflict, Grant sorely disappointed those Irish-Americans hankering for a chance to strike a blow for Irish freedom through an American-led war.
Bush, on the other hand, would seem to have lost significant Irish-American support in arresting and working to deport a number of now long-retired Irish militants living peacefully in the United States. These men, Ciarán Ferry, Malachy McAllister, Paul Harkin, and John McNicholl, who had established families and standing in their American communities, were arrested in a process that, to many Irish nationalists in America, seem payback to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It is his support of the American incursion into Iraq that has given crucial credibility to Bush's efforts to justify its actions there.
Both Bush and Grant also traveled to Ireland on the heels of economic hardship in the United States. In 1879, the United States was emerging from a severe economic depression, which began in 1873 when the entire banking system of the nation collapsed. Grant used his Irish platforms to talk about how Irish manufacturers could avoid American import tariffs by opening factories in the United States.
The Bush administration has presided over a rocky three years for the U.S. economy, with a departure of jobs overseas contributing to overall job loss for the first time in a presidential administration since Herbert Hoover during The Great Depression. Bush is coming to Ireland ostensibly to mend fences with the European Union, whose rotating presidency is in the hands of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. Bush's mission, if successful, would likely provide a further stimulus to the U.S. economy.
WGT/Chet Smith Ulysses S. Grant's five-day tour through Ireland in 1879 led him by rail from Dublin through Louth and then in a circuit throughout Ulster for overnights in Derry City and Belfast. Grant returned to Dublin, where he departed for India. (Click on the highlighted area to trace Grant's tour.)
In a role reversal that underscores just how vastly the Republican Party has changed in 125 years, Grant and Bush represent opposing stances on the question of state funding of private education. Grant ran afoul of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and faithful with his unwavering opposition to any state funding of parochial schools. Bush, on the other hand, is an ardent advocate of government-funded vouchers for parents sending children to parochial and other private schools.
Suggesting the importance of the Roman Catholic Church in America's electoral process in the decades after political turmoil and famine sent millions of Irish to America, Grant paid a visit to Pope Leo XIII while visiting Rome in 1878, the year before his tour of Ireland, while Bush called on Pope John Paul II in Rome on June 4.
Certainly, the least surprising parallel between the Bush and Grant visits is the timing, with both men traveling to Ireland with a new presidential election in the offing. Grant in 1879 was positioning himself for a possible run for an unprecedented third term. He was the leading contender heading into the 1880 Republican convention. On the 36th ballot, James Garfield, a compromise candidate, won. Garfield went on to defeat Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, another former commander in the Union Army. WGT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WGT Producer Gerry Regan, a New York City-based journalist, spent his third undergraduate year studying modern Irish and British history at Trinity College, Dublin.
This page was produced by Joseph E. Gannon, with research assistance from Scott Berman and Frank Scaturro.
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