Irish-American papers reframed abolitionism as disloyal British interference to reject it.

Evidence

The first of the Irish newspapers to comment on the Address was the Boston Pilot. Collins, who had persuaded the Pilot to accept an advertisement for the Faneuil Hall meeting, had described the paper as “the thermometer of the Irish feeling in this country.” In 1839, in an editorial entitled “Abolitionism and ‘Popery,’” it had argued that opposition to slavery did not imply approval of abolitionism, which it said was “thronged with bigotted and persecuting religionists; with men who, in their private capacity, desire the extermination of Catholics by fire and sword.” Now the thermometer was registering boil. On February 5, 1842, while acknowledging the virtue of O’Connell’s sympathy for the slave, the Pilot asked how he could reconcile his advocacy of moral force with support for the abolitionists, whose doctrines would “bathe the whole South in blood.” It warned against linking the question of Repeal to any other movement, and predicted that the Irish would never be drawn into “the vortex of abolitionism” which threatened the dissolution of the Union. A week later the Pilot contributed another argument which would become a standard part of the repertoire of the anti-abolitionist chorus: abolition was a British plot to weaken the United States. “Can the exiled victims of British oppression,” it asked, “relinquish the hate they bear the oppressor, and lend their influence for the furtherance of his subtle schemes?” — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 63

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Abolitionists feared Irish immigrant papers would block Irish-black solidarity — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 66; Irish-American leaders suppressed Irish abolitionist solidarity to protect Repeal unity — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 82