[1] The habit of constantly importing indentured Irish servants, as well as German laborers, under contract, prevailed throughout the colonies; and the number of men thus imported was quite sufficient to form a considerable element in the population, and to add a new, although perhaps not very valuable, strain to our already mixed blood. In taking up at random the file of the New York Gazette for 1766, we find among the advertisements many offering rewards for runaway servants; such as "three pounds for the runaway servant Conner O'Rourke," "ten pounds for the runaway Irish servant, Philip Maginnis," "five pounds apiece for certain runaway German miners—Bruderlein, Baum, Ostmann, etc.—imported under contract;" all this mixed in with advertisements of rewards of about the same money value for "the mulatto man named Tom," or the "negroes Nero and Pompey." Still, in speaking of the revolutionary armies, the word "Irish" must almost always be understood as meaning Presbyterian Irish; the Catholic Irish had but little hand in the war, and that little was limited to furnishing soldiers to some of the British regiments. The Presbyterian Irish, however, in the revolutionary armies, played a part as manful and valiant as, and even more important than, that taken by the Catholic Irish soldiers who served so bravely during the great contest between the North and South. The few free Catholic Irish already in America in 1776 were for the most part heartily loyal; but they were not numerous enough to be of the least consequence.

[2] The italics are mine.

[3] As, for instance, in a letter to David R. Ogden, April 5, 1813.

[4] People sometimes forget that Burr was as willing to try sedition in the East as in the West.