Belfast's first bomb, 28 February 1816: class conflict and the origins of Ulster Unionist Hegemony.

Irish immigrant correspondence has great scholarly value. It provides insight, of course, into the processes of Irish migration and adaptation, but occasionally it can also illuminate contemporary events, developments, or concerns that historians have either not noticed or failed to investigate or appreciate fully. Such may be the case with the following letter, written by William Coyne in Belfast on St. Patrick's Day, 1816. (1)

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William Coyne was probably a master cooper, and he may have been in his mid-forties when he wrote this, his only surviving letter, to his brother in Duchess County, New York. Very likely William Coyne was a Protestant and perhaps a member of the legally established Church of Ireland. Early nineteenth-century Belfast was a rapidly growing city of migrants, principally from East Ulster's Lagan Valley, and, given the reference in his letter, it is probable that Coyne had moved to Belfast from the predominantly Anglican parish of Magher

agall, in the barony of Massareene Upper, in Southwest County Antrim. (2)

In the early 1800s transatlantic mail was expensive, and its delivery uncertain. Consequently, Irish immigrant correspondence was filled primarily with information that was, for its authors and recipients, vitally important but which often appears to contemporary scholars as mundanely personal or familial. The principal subjects of William Coyne's letter, however, were very public and quite dramatic, and his missive's exceptional character indicates that he and his neighbors in Belfast considered the developments he described to be extraordinarily significant--and that he assumed his brother in faraway America would consider them equally so. Hopefully, social and political historians of early nineteenth-century Ulster will also find Coyne's letter of interest.

William and E. Coyne, Belfast, to Henry Coyne, Pleasant Valley, Duchess County, New York, 17 March 1816(3)

Belfast 17th March 1816 Dear Brother