15. An explosion of Irish immigration to the United States marked the end of the summer of 1816
During the year which preceded the year with no summer, just under 2,000 Irish asked permission from the British government to leave Ireland for the United States (which then had no immigration limits upon them). In August, 1816, as the ravages of the weather and the inability of the British government to mount an effective response took hold, more than 700 Irish applied for permission to leave in just one week. Nearly all of them were from the northern counties, then known collectively as Ulster, today Northern Ireland. Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, hated to see the Protestant Irish decamp for the United States, that “not only should Ireland lose so many industrious and valuable inhabitants but that the United States of America should reap the advantage”, he found detestable.
The British government increased duties on American shipping as a response to the Irish exodus, which made it financially unfeasible for poorer Irish Catholics (whom Peel loathed) to leave the country. Many of the Irish arrived in America with little money and no prospects, and the ability to travel to the promised lands of the West was denied them. Few farmers had need for hired workers due to the reduced harvests. The Irish huddled in the cities which welcomed them to America, the ports of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Some found work on the emerging American infrastructure. As doleful as conditions had been in Ulster, they were often worse yet in the depressed American cities, with jobs and food both scarce as a result of the collapse of the economy from the ravages of the weather on the world’s crops.