Page "Irish diaspora" Paragraph 57

The experience of Irish immigrants in America has not always been harmonious.

Irish newcomers were sometimes uneducated and often found themselves competing with Americans for manual labour jobs or, in the 1860s, being recruited from the docks by the U. S. Army to serve in the American Civil War and afterward to build the Union Pacific Railroad.

This view of the Irish-American experience is depicted by another traditional song, " Paddy's Lamentation.