“Ireland is too great to be unconnected with us, and too near us to be dependant on a foreign state, and too little to be independent.”  C.T. Grenville to the Duke of Rutland, December 3, 1784 (H.M.C. 14 report app. 1, p. 155)  This statement sums up the attitude of Great Britain toward Ireland from the twelfth century to the twentieth.

The passage of the National Service Act in January 1916 which threatened conscription in Ireland was one of the causes of  the Easter Rising.  The 1916 Rising represented the first major demonstration of force since the United Irishmen Rising of 1798.  The insurrections of 1803, 1848 and 1867 had been small in comparison.  (E. A. Benian.  The Cambridge History of the British Empire. London, 1959. p.663)

The Great Potato Famine. 

    From 1843 to 1851 over 1 million Irish starved and over 2 million emigrated to  other countries.    As a result of “An Gorta Mor” and political/religious persecution, many of the Irish emigrated to the United States in 1847-1855.  Some of them settled near Chicago, Illinois and later many moved to central Illinois counties of Macon, Shelby, Moultrie and Christian.