Patrick Ford

• Patrick Ford
• Born: April 12, 1835
• Died: September 23, 1913

Irish nationalist, editor, and social reformer, was born in Galway, the son of Edward Ford and Anne Ford, both of whom died in his childhood. Emigrating from Ireland to Boston in 1842 with family friends, he attended first a grammar school and then the Latin School. Newspaper work for the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave him a taste for journalism, which he pursued as the publisher and editor of The Boston Sunday Times in 1859-60. With the coming of the Civil War, he joined the Ninth Massachusetts Regiment and fought in the catastrophic Union charge at the battle of Fredericksburg. Married in 1863 to Odele McDonald, he spent the years 1864-66 in South Carolina, founding and editing The Charleston Gazette.

Ford began his career as a crusader for Irish freedom in 1870 when he founded the newspaper The Irish World in New York City. The Irish World developed a large readership among low-income Irish immigrants in New York City, and Ford was constantly concerned with solutions for unemployment and proposals for economic relief. In 1874 he helped to form the Greenback Labor party. Urging his readers to improve their chances of economic survival and mobility by abstaining from alcohol, he never accepted liquor advertisements. In the spirit of the liberal idealism of the mid-nineteenth century, Ford and other Irish nationalist leaders urged their constituents toward values of thrift, pride. work and other virtues admired also by Protestant Americans.

These common values were partly applied by Ford to the issue of Irish liberation from England. He and his fellow nationalists envisioned an Ireland democratic politically and also economically, with Irish peasants freed from oppression. Convinced that American support was vital for these aspirations, in 1874 Ford wrote: “Ireland’s base of operations [is the United States]. Here in this Republic—whose flag first flashed on the breeze in defiance of England—whose first national hosts rained an iron hail of destruction upon England’s power—. .. we are free to express the sentiments and declare the hopes of Ireland.”

In this message to Irish revolutionaries from American sympathizers, Ford manifested the eloquence that contributed to his prestige among his readers. “There are those among you,” he wrote, “who, perhaps, will yet live to uplift Ireland’s banner above the ruins of London, and proclaim with trumpet-tongued voice, whose echoes shall reverberate to the ends of the earth—’The rod of the oppressor is broken! Babylon the great is fallen.’ ” Ford urged Irish peasants to withhold their rents and, ultimately, to rebel. He criticized Home Rule and demanded complete Irish independence.

Ford consulted with Michael Davitt, an Irish land reformer who came to America to seek support. Subsequent to the American tour of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist leader, an American Land League was formed. During 1880-81 Ford, operating almost alone, raised d $345,072 for the league and organized 2,500 branches. In 1881 Ford published A Criminal History of the British Empire, which set forth his ideas on Irish independence and society in the form of letters originally addressed to the British prime minister, William E. Gladstone, in The Irish World. In 1885 Ford published The Irish Question and American Statesmen.

The question of Irish independence and the activity of Irish-Americans began to be noticed. In 1884 Ford was influential in leading thousands of Democrats to desert their party and vote for the Republican presidential candidate, James G. Blaine. In 1886 Ford supported the candidacy of the single-tax reformer Henry George for mayor of New York City; in 1885 George had been well received on a trip to Ireland, where his tax program was viewed as an interesting solution to the Irish land problem.

Ford died in his Brooklyn home at the age of seventy-eight.

Ford, and his explosive writings in The Irish World did not go unnoticed in England. Gladstone is reputed to have been distressed by the effectiveness of Ford’s militance and by his ability to raise money for his cause in Ireland. But, aside from his impact on the Irish situation, Ford helped make Irish-Americans into a community in the United States, stimulating them to form their own organizations and to gain experience in reading and writing about important political issues. Polemical zeal could inspire reflection about Irish-American identity, as could indication to larger goals, and for over forty years Ford was instrumental in this process.

An article by Ford, “The Irish Vote in the Pending Presidential Election,” was published in the North American Review August1888. Biographical sources include W. V. Shannon, The American Irish (rev. ed., 1966); Who’s Who in America, 1912—13; and the obituary in The New York Times, September 24, 1913. See also the Dictionary of American Biography (1931).