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About this time the British conveniently "discovered" a pro-German plot in Ireland and in a huge midnight round-up arrested and carted off to England hundreds of prominent Sinn Feiners, including de Valera. The T.D.'s still at large then met, proclaimed the Irish Republic and named de Valera its "President." After that daring supporters smuggled the "President" out of jail, and the Irish "secret service" of Michael Collins, also a veteran of the Easter Rebellion, managed to get him on a ship to the U. S., long fertile ground for Irish nationalism. There he did what many another Irish patriot had done before—raised money and sympathy for the Irish cause.
By 1850 there were 4,000,000 Irish of the U. S.'s 24,000,000 population. Irish influence in U. S. affairs—particularly politics—was growing yearly. Most Irishmen were Democrats, and after the Civil War Irish-run political machines kept the Democratic Party alive in the North. They virtually elected Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency. Secretary of State John Hay forever claimed that his hands were tied by bitter Irish anti-British sentiment, and it was the Irish voter who not only forced Cleveland to take a strong stand against Great Britain in the Venezuelan crisis of 1895-96 but who also helped to prevent a U. S.-British alliance in the Far East.
New Type. The Ireland from which de Valera came to the U. S. in 1919 was not the same island from which Irishmen had fled to the U. S. in the times of Cromwell and William of Orange, not the same island whose people fled to the U. S. during the potato famines of a century ago. Meanwhile, it had had a cultural renaissance. Irishmen had begun again to take poetic pride in their land, with its purple mountains, its lakes and glens peopled with green-coated, leather-aproned leprechauns, the heather-crowned hills of Donegal, the rocky outlines of the Aran Islands. Their poetry that always symbolized Ireland as a woman beautiful and bereaved was brought back to life. The story of Ireland's long struggle for independence, delivered of yore by ragged, foot-sore balladiers, was resurrected so that again, on Dublin streets, could be heard ballad singers raising the cry: "Arise ye dead of Ireland, and rouse her living men."
George Russell, William Butler Yeats and Standish O'Grady had led a new literary revival. The Irish theatre had blossomed. Irish journalism had come out of hiding. In 1893 a Gaelic League had begun to revive the use of the Irish language and the traditional dances and music of Ireland. An early member was Eamon de Valera.
In the U. S. this exiled Irish statesman was something of a novelty. He was a rigid teetotaler. He was a reserved scholar who liked to solve mathematical problems, study Thomistic philosophy, play an organ. As an orator he was almost flat; he neither talked about personalities nor used extravagant imagery.