Exceptionalism, Exclusion, and the American Revolution: Mathew Carey’s Vindiciae Hibernicae and an Alternative Founding Narrative

Abstract: This article explores the symbolic use of the American revolution in Mathew Carey’s Vindiciae Hibernicae , a revisionist history of the Irish rebellion of 1641. Carey, an Irish-born Philadelphia publisher, declared throughout Vindiciae Hibernicae that Irish Catholics had a legitimate reason to rebel, because they had been subjected to a persecution by the British that surpassed any other example in world history. To reinforce this claim, Carey repeatedly drew on the history of the American Revolutionary war, claiming that the Irish had a greater cause for resistance than the Patriots, that British rule in Ireland was more appalling than in the American colonies before 1776. In doing so, Carey attempted to retroactively legitimate the rising of 1641. This article evaluates Carey’s attempt to challenge assumptions in the early republic that Catholics were outsiders in the American body politic, that the founding of the United States had been a Protestant phenomenon. For Carey, Vindiciae would prove that the Irish rebels in 1641 had been justified, and that Irish Catholics belonged within the United States. He aimed to hold the United States to its founding promise to offer a haven for the disposed of the old world. Throughout Vindiciae , Carey grappled with these exceptionalist narrative of the American founding, to demand a place for the Irish in the new United States. This article addresses Carey’s attempts, their impact, and the legacy he left for Irish-Americans throughout the nineteenth century.