The Irish, both Catholics and Protestants, poured into the patriot ranks once the standard of revolt was raised in 1775.  The Pennsylvania line, which General Lee called “the line of Ireland,” was almost entirely Irish, and the rosters of several of the Maryland and Virginia regiments contain a remarkably large proportion of Irish names, in some cases running as high as 60 per cent.  It is computed that the Irish furnished not less than a third of the whole American forces.  A common cause blotted out all old religious prejudices between Irishmen in the American service.  It was John Sullivan, of New Hampshire, son of a Limerick schoolmaster, who began the revolt by seizing the fort of William and Mary and its storehouses filled with that powder which charged the guns at Bunker Hill in the following year.  It was Captain Jeremiah O’Brien, with his brothers, who made the first sea attack on the British off Machias, Maine, in May, 1775, an engagement which Fenimore Cooper calls “the Lexington of the Seas.”  There were fifteen Celtic Irish names among the Minute Men at the Battle of Lexington.  Colonel Barrett, who commanded at Concord, was Irish.  There were 258 Celtic Irish names on the rosters of the American forces at the battle of Bunker Hill.  John Sullivan had been made a major-general, thereafter to be a notable figure in the war at Princeton, Trenton, Newport, and in his Indian campaign.  The Connecticut line was thick with Irish names.  Around Washington himself was a circle of brilliant Irishmen:  Adjutant-General Edward Hand leading his rifles, Stephen Moylan his dragoons, General Henry Knox and Colonel Proctor at the head of his artillery, John Dunlop his body-guard, Andrew Lewis his brigadier-general, Ephraim Elaine his quartermaster, all of Irish birth or ancestry.  Commodore John Barry, born in Wexford in 1739 and bred to the sea, was a ship captain in his early twenties, trading from Philadelphia.  When the Continental Congress met, he at once volunteered, and was given command of the Lexington, the first American ship to capture a British war vessel.  Later, after gallant fighting on sea and land, he was given command of the U.S. frigate Alliance, in which he crossed the Atlantic to France, and fought and captured in a rattling battle two British warships, the Atlanta and the Trepasay.  He was the Father of the American navy, holding captain’s certificate No. 1, signed by Washington himself—­the highest rank then issued.

General Richard Montgomery, the brave and able soldier who fell at Quebec as he charged the heights, was an Irishman.  General George Clinton, son of an Irishman, was a brigadier-general, governor of New York and twice Vice-President of the United States.  Fifty-seven officers of New York regiments in the Revolution were Irish, and a large number of the officers in the Southern regiments of the line, as well as of the militia, were native Irish or of Irish descent.  The rosters of the enlisted Irishmen of the New York