Category Archives: John Purroy Mitchel

Sending off the 27th

28 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in 27th (New York) Division, John Francis O'Ryan (General), John Purroy Mitchel, Woodrow Wilson

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The Biltmore as it was in 1917

As August 1917 wound down the officers and men of what was now the 27th Division prepared to leave for Spartanburg, South Carolina. They were supposed to go several weeks earlier but bureaucratic snafus in the War Department prevented that from happening. Things were now as in place as they were going to get. Before the division left, the people of New York prepared a three-day fête to see the men off. On Tuesday 28 August about 500 people showed up at the Biltmore Hotel to honor Major General John F. O’Ryan, the division’s commander. There seemed to be a conscious attempt to play up the Irish aspect of the evening. Mayor Mitchel was one of the organizers and T.P. O’Connor gave the keynote. Broadway turned silent film star William Courtleigh was the master of ceremonies. The evening was quite reserved and understated; organizers were trying to Hooverize–conserve in the name of the war effort–as much as they could.

It had been a hectic few days. Later the past week New York State’s attorney general had placed O’Ryan on the New York National Guard inactive list. This was because President Wilson and the Senate had appointed O’Ryan, and most all militia officers, in the National Army a few weeks back. That had put O’Ryan’s militia status somewhat in question. O’Ryan had spent much of this time visiting his regiments out in the field. Many of them were camped out in municipal parks. Brooklyn’s Twenty-Third Infantry Regiment for instance was training in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The time to move on was near and people were gathering. All of O’Ryan’s staff were on hand at the Biltmore dinner as well. The dinner was just the lead-up to what was to come over the following two days.

 

T.P. O’Connor visits America

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Gettysburg, John Purroy Mitchel, New York City, Woodrow Wilson

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Irish journalist and Parliamentarian T.P. O’Connor visited the United States in June-July 1917 to discuss America’s role in the Great War and the future of Irish Home Rule.

After the United States entered the Great War in 1917 diplomatic and military missions from various European nations came to speak to Wilson Administration officials and engage in public diplomacy with the American people. One hundred years ago today T.P. O’Connor of the Irish Nationalist Party met with President Wilson n the White House. The meeting seemed to go well. O’Connor had arrived in the United States on June 24 and set up headquarters at the Knickerbocker Hotel at 42nd and Broadway in Manhattan. The affable and indefatigable Irish politician and writer had audiences with as many as forty individuals on any given day before moving on to Washington. The war was an obvious topic of discussion wherever O’Conner went. One of his visitors was John Purroy Mitchel, the New York City mayor who was one of the strongest supporters on America’s entry into the war. In a speech in early July during the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg he went out of his way to mention the Irish Brigade and Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher was not at Gettysburg but the audience understood the sentiment.

General Thomas Franics Meagher, born in Ireland in 1823, led the Irish Brigade from First Bull Run through Chancellorsville and was an inspiration to many Irish and Irish-Americans. He fell from a steamboat in the Montana Territory in 1867, 150 years ago this month, and his remains were never recovered. This memorial stands in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

O’Connor’s primary objective, as he readily acknowledged, was garnering support for the Irish Nationalists in the lead-up to the Home Rule Convention to be held in London in late July. The reason for so many meetings was to gauge the sentiments of the Irish-American community. His was a difficult task. It was just fifteen months after the Easter Uprising and representatives from Sinn Féin were coming to the United States shortly after O’Connor returned to London.

(top image/New York Public Library)

Decoration Day 1917, cont’d

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Charles S. Whitman (Governor), J. Franklin Bell (General), John Purroy Mitchel, New York City, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Decoration Day, what we now call Memorial Day, originated in the years just after the American Civil War. In 1966, just after the Centennial, President Johnson and Congress pronounced somewhat dubiously that Waterloo, New York was the locale where Decoration Day had begun in 1866. In all likelihood it didn’t happen that way; citizens were showing up independently at local cemeteries throughout the North and South in that first full spring after the war’s end. Tending flowers on graves was timed with the planting season. Still, we do know that two years later John Logan, leader of the Grand Army of the Republic, called for all G.A.R. members to reserve 30 May 30 1868 as the official Decoration Day for members of the organization. This imprimatur added to the institutionalization of Decoration/Memorial Day. I say all this because it did not occur to me until yesterday that this made Decoration Day 1917 the 50th such observation. And yes, that means 2017 is the 150th.

It is unclear if local, state, and federal leaders understood all this in May 1917 but, however coincidentally, it worked out well for the Great War effort. While Governor Whitman was reviewing troops with J. Franklin Bell uptown on 30 May 30 1917, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel was in Union Square christening the U.S.S. Recruit. The ship was just that, a scaled-down mock-up of a battleship built to promote recruiting for the Navy. Mayor Mitchel had long been a proponent of Preparedness and as such was an ally of Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, and Governor Whitman. Mitchel built the Recruit under the auspices of his Committee on National Defense. Decoration Day 1917 appears to have been something of a tag team affair, with Governor Whitman and General Bell reviewing the Army and National Guard troops uptown while the mayor focused on the Navy farther south. To be sure there was some Navy and Marine involvement in the uptown parade, but it was primarily an Army and Guard event.

New York’s ports were more important to the local economy than they are today–and the Brooklyn Navy Yard was still going strong–but the Navy was nonetheless small and removed from the daily lives of New Yorkers. Hence the idea for the Recruit. Remember, there was no television let alone internet in this era. To see what Navy personnel did–and how you might contribute yourself–the mayor and his allies figured a living model might be helpful. One could buy Liberty Bonds there as well. Here are a few images from that event one hundred years ago today.

(Note: all photographs are via the Library of Congress and were taken on 30 May 1917 with the possible exception of the top most image, which did not have a specific date. I included it to give a panoramic view of the U.S.S. Recruit, which ran about two hundred feet long and forty feet at its widest point.)