Joe Biden to visit the north for 25th anniversary of Good Friday Agreement

The President of the United States of America, who identifies as Irish, confirmed he would make the visit after a press conference with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“It’s my intention to go to Northern Ireland and the Republic,” said Mr. Biden, following a meeting with Mr. Sunak in California on Monday.

Details of the US President’s itinerary have not yet been confirmed but there has been speculation that further details are likely to be released when Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visits the White House in Washington, D.C. on St. Patrick’s Day.

Mr. Biden, who was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, traces his roots to Ireland.

According to Jules Witcover's 2010 biography 'Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption,' the ‘Finnegan side was Irish, from County Derry’ although the 46th US President is more closely associated with Co. Mayo and Co. Louth.

He has regularly quoted the lines from the late Derry poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘The Cure of Troy’ in the context of the peace process: “History says, don’t hope on this side of the grave, but then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice rises up and make hope and history rhyme.”

Prior to his assumption of the US Presidency he was among those to pay tribute to the late Derry Nobel Peace Laureate John Hume, stating: "John Hume committed his life to the principles of non-violence, and through his faith, statesmanship, and perseverance, he helped bring Northern Ireland through the Troubles to a better tomorrow.”

One of Mr. Biden’s predecessors in the Oval Office, President Bill Clinton, who also famously claims Irish roots, visited Derry as a sitting President on November 30, 1995 in support of the peace process, and returned to the city on several occasions after leaving office.

Several signatories of the American Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, left Ireland from Derry.

One of them, Matthew Thornton, was born on a farm about one mile from the city, according to Charles Thornton Adams’ biography ‘Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire: a patriot of the American Revolution’ (1901).

Derry to Philadelphia: The Irish Gateway to America

The first copies of the declaration were printed by John Dunlap from Strabane.

The President’s political stomping ground of Delaware is the location of the wreck of the ‘Faithful Steward’ which foundered with the loss of almost two hundred emigrants’ lives off Coin Beach on September 1, 1785.

The ship left Derry for Philadelphia in July 1785 with a cargo of 249 emigrants and 400 barrels of copper half pennies and rose gold guineas on board and embarked on its final two month voyage to the revolutionary United States.

Tragically, she foundered near the mouth of the Indian River in Delaware just yards from shore and only 90 miles from her final destination, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’.

All but 68 of the 249 emigrants were drowned as they tried to float to shore on debris or as they failed to swim the final hundred yards to land and safety. The tragedy is marked with a bench on the quayside in Derry and with a memorial between Rehoboth Beach and Bethany Beach on the Delaware coast.

DERRY JOURNAL 250: First editor George Douglas’ ‘Journal’ reported on a time of revolutionary ferment