Refracted Republicanism Plowden’s History, Paddy’s Resource, and Irish Jacobins in Western Pennsylvania

Abstract

abstract: Two books of significance to contemporary Irish political radicalism were republished in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century: in 1796 Paddy’s Resource, an anthology of songs and toasts; and in 1806 the multivolume history of Ireland authored by Francis Plowden. Together, these literary productions help bring into focus both the centrality of Philadelphia in the percolation of Democratic-Republican politics and the ideas and personalities animating the Irish diaspora of Pennsylvania’s western region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Irish American communities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh became defined through alliance with the Jeffersonian party, ethnic symbols, and in part, the songs transmitted by Paddy’s Resource.