ghts, was an Irishman. General George
Clinton, son of an Irishman, was a brigadier-general, governor of New
York and twice Vice-President of the United States. Fifty-seven
officers of New York regiments in the Revolution were Irish, and a
large number of the officers in the Southern regiments of the line,
as well as of the militia, were native Irish or of Irish descent. The
rosters of the enlisted Irishmen of the New York regiments run into
the thousands. Hundreds of Irish soldiers suffered in the prison
ships of New York, the horrors of which served so conspicuously to
stimulate American determination to carry the war to the only
rightful conclusion. Washington always recognized America's debt to
the Irish. "St. Patrick" he made the watchword in the patriot lines
the night before the English evacuated Boston forever on the
memorable 17th of March, 1776. After the war he was made, with his
own consent, an honorary member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
Major-General Richard Butler and his four brothers, all officers, and
Brigadier-Generals John Armstrong, William Irvine, William Thompson,
James Smith, and Griffith Rutherford all fought with distinction. All
of these officers were Irish-born. It was in truth an Irish war, so
far as Irish sentiment and whole-hearted service could make it. The
record of Irish soldiers' names alone would fill volumes.

The thirst of the Irish race for the glory of war is shown in the
large enlistments in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and
since, in the English army and navy. Grattan, in pleading for
Ireland, claimed that a large percentage of the British forces were
Irish. Wolfe Tone avers that there were 210 Irishmen out of 220 in
the crew of a British frigate that overhauled his ship on its way to
America. Bonaparte had in his armies an Irish Legion that did good
service in Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Marshal Clarke,
Duke of Feltre, French Minister of War in 1809, was Irish. Up and
down the Spanish Peninsula, Irish blood was shed in abundance in the
armies of Wellington. Never was more brilliant fighting done than
that which stands to Irish credit from the lines of Torres Vedras to
Badajos and Toulouse. Of the Waterloo campaign volumes have been
written in praise of Irish valor. As Maxwell says in his _Tales of
Waterloo_:--"The victors of Marengo and Austerlitz reeled before the
charge of the Connaught Rangers." Wellington himself was Irish, as in
the later w