Paul McElhinney 
It was the second year of the Clinton Presidency, a sweltering summer, when in the month of July 1994, I visited to the town of Gettysburg and its famous Civil War battle site. It was a time when the ‘Washington Consensus’ was at its peak. The Soviet Union and the communist regimes of Eastern Europe
Most visits by US Presidents to Ireland have been ‘Irish vote’-related or homecoming trips to ancestral roots. Trips by Kennedy, Reagan, Obama, Clinton and Biden are cases in point. The visit in late August 1962 of Gettysburg’s most famous resident, former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was of another hue altogether. Eisenhower visited the town of
Pennsylvania’s deep and lasting connection with Ireland stretches back to the 17th century, shaping the state’s history through waves of immigration, political involvement, business, and cultural life. The first major group of Irish immigrants to Pennsylvania were the Scots-Irish, or Ulster-Scots—Presbyterians who fled religious persecution in Ireland. Welcomed by William Penn’s “oasis of religious tolerance,”