Patricks Day to recall the outstanding contributions that Americans of Irish descent have made toward the goal of a better America for us all. Between 1845 and 1850. 800.000 Irish entered the United States for the first time to be followed by another million by 1860. This great influx of people formed the first wave of an immigration flood that became. and still is. a salient and unique feature of this Nations experience. A disastrous series of potato crop failures beginning in 1845. caused a famine throughout Ireland. killing thousands and forcing thousands more to flee for survival. People who had rarely ventured more than a few miles from their little farming villages packed their belongings and made the difficult voyage to America in search of the freedom from want that their homeland could not then provide. Many made their way under contract labor system in which they paid for their passage with their only things of valuetheir physical strength and their desire for a secure new life in America. The victims of the famine were certainly not the first Irish in America. Thousands had come here since the earliest colonial times.
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immigration contract labor