National:
Quarterly veterans committee calls.
State: NSTR.
Veterans: As we approach the 250th anniversary of the US Army in June 2025 and our nation in 2026, this 15th of June will be the 249th anniversary of the US Army, I thought I would look at Irish patriots who supported our Revolution against Great Britian. One supporter, who was not Catholic, but supported American independence as an example for Irish independence with Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone 20 June 1763 – 19 November 1798) was a revolutionary exponent of Irish independence and an iconic figure in Irish republicanism. Convinced that, so long as his fellow Protestants feared to make common cause with the Catholic majority, the British Crown would continue to govern Ireland in the interest of England and of its client aristocracy, in 1791 he helped form the Society of United Irishmen. By that time, American independence was assured and served as an example of a united people in a common cause.
George Washington Park Custis, Washington’s adopted son and a careful student of history, placed the significant Irish contribution to the American Revolution in a proper historical perspective:
“When our friendless standard was first unfurled for resistance, who were strangers [foreigners] that first mustered ‘round its staff when it reeled in the fight, who more bravely sustained it than Erin’s generous sons? Who led the assault on Quebec [General Montgomery] and shed early luster on our arms, in the dawn of our revolution? Who led the right wing of Liberty’s forlorn hope [General Sullivan] at the passage of the Delaware [just before the attack on Trenton]? Who felt the privations of the camp, the fate of battle, or the horrors of the prison ship more keenly than the Irish? Washington loved them, for they were the companions of his toil, his perils, his glories, in the deliverance of his country.”
