It is not the purpose to pursue here the history of the Irish in New York City from the outbreak of the Civil War through the half century to our day. To the battle for the Union, however, the New York Irish furnished magnificent quotas of fighting men, and capable officers, earning names for bravery and skill, as would be expected of their race. Indeed, it was the whole-souled devotion of the Irish all over the northern states and their brilliant services in the field and on the sea that threw down the last barriers of prejudice against their people in America. Such a name as Phil Sheridan’s was one to charm with, not to name another of the galaxy of great Irish captains of the war. The Irish immigrant stream was, however, still flowing. From 1861 to 1900 they numbered over 2,000,000 souls, but this later flood came in somewhat better estate than their forerunners—fairly equalling in condition the concurrent German immigration and easily surpassing all others. It is for the most part, naturally, of these comers since 1860, that our Irish-born of today are composed, and through the entire country they can be found in substantial positions. But it is of their children and the children and grandchildren of the earlier immigration that the wonder-story of worldly uprise is to be told. New York, of course, has its share, and a large one, in this. If we can pick out from the later decades of the nineteenth century such names as James T. Brady and Charles O’Conor at the bar, A. T. Stewart among the merchants, Eugene Kelly among the bankers, William H. Grace, the great pioneer merchant of South America and twice our mayor; Archbishop Hughes, Cardinal McCloskey among the clerics, John W. Mackay among the great capitalists, Augustus St. Gaudens among the sculptors, O’Callaghan, Murphy and O’Reilly among the historians, how many names of eminence in every walk of art, science, law, religion, commerce, manufacture can be furnished from the Irish-born and Irish-descended of today! There are the great builders like John B. McDonald, who constructed the subway; James Coleman, who built the great Croton dam; but why enter on a list as long as that of the ships in Homer? Be it Thomas Fortune Ryan or John D. Crimmins in the world of finance, the representatives of Irish brain are there. It is of record that the second president of the New York Chamber of Commerce, which was founded in 1768, was Hugh Wallace, an Irishman. It is worthy of remark that Alexander E. Orr, also a native of Ireland, was president of the same body, until a year ago, and that his successor is J. Edward Simmons, also of Irish blood, who in his time has been lawyer, bank president, President of the Stock Exchange, President of the Board of Education and President of the New York Clearing House.