America’s Civil War: Why the Irish Fought for the Union

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The Irish experience in the Civil War has probably received more attention — and celebration — than that of any other ethnic group. Mention of the Irish commonly conjures up images of the Irish Brigade’s doomed charge at Fredericksburg, of Father William Corby granting absolution before Gettysburg, or possibly the mourning wolfhound at the base of the Irish Brigade’s monument on the same battlefield. The reality of the Irish experience in the war was, as might be expected, more complex. The most politically active — and contentious — of the nation’s mid-19th-century immigrant groups, the Irish shared many of the experiences of the Northern soldier. Yet in some ways the Irish were different, not only from native-born soldiers, but from other immigrant groups as well.

Although a smattering of Irish Catholics had lived in America since the colonial period, there was no significant immigration to the United States until the catastrophe of the Potato Famine (1845-1853) set it in motion. The first non-Protestant group to arrive in large numbers, the Irish often faced both religious and ethnic prejudice from the then largely Anglo-Saxon population. Anti-Catholic, particularly anti–Irish Catholic, feelings led to the formation of the American or Know-Nothing Party, which enjoyed a brief period of influence in the early 1850s before the growing sectional dispute pushed the Catholic immigrant issue to the sidelines.

Growing Irish presence and political power in the nation’s cities worried elite Americans such as the Boston Brahmins, who accepted the British aristocracy’s view of the Irish as a superstitious, ignorant and volatile people who had to be kept under control, if not barred from the nation’s door. Certainly the masses of impoverished, uneducated Irish crowded into ethnic ghettoes, with customs and sometimes a language that seemed alien, colored the nativist response. Inveterate New York diarist George Templeton Strong exemplified the attitude of many wealthy old-stock Americans. Happening upon a group of Irish women chanting ‘the keen’ — the traditional form of Gaelic lament — after a number of their menfolk were killed in a construction accident, Strong wrote: ‘It was an uncanny sound to hear; quite new to me….Our Celtic fellow citizens are almost as remote from us in temperament and constitution as the Chinese.’

Irish political attitudes were strongly affected by the upsurge in nativism from 1840-1855, when convents were burned in Charlestown, Mass., and Philadelphia. The Know-Nothings even took over the Massachusetts state government in 1854, after which they passed a law forbidding the raising of militia units comprised mostly of men of foreign birth, a measure aimed at the Irish ‘Columbia Artillery.’ The newcomers were also aware that many of the old-stock social and commercial elite, while not Know-Nothings themselves, shared similar views. Though the fast unraveling Whig Party made little effort to attract Irish support, the newcomers were welcomed by the Democratic Party. By 1860, they were a major force in urban Democratic politics and were poised to take over many of the party’s urban organizations, a feat they achieved in the 1870s and 1880s.

When the Republican Party emerged after 1854 to challenge the Democrats, it found relatively few Irish adherents. The presence in the party of former Know-Nothings, plus the strain of abolitionism in its New England adherents, rendered the Republicans suspect in the eyes of most Irishmen. The Irish antagonism towards abolitionism stemmed from the group’s fragile economic position. Common Irish laborers found themselves in competition with free blacks in the North (and in New Orleans). The abolitionist demand for the end of slavery provoked almost hysterical fear of a flood of liberated slaves marching north and ousting the Irish from their jobs by accepting lower wages. Although the Republican platform of 1860 called only for no further expansion of slavery, many Irish suspected that the demand was only a first step.

Nevertheless, the firing on Fort Sumter and President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers evoked a sense of patriotism to the Union that was fanned by Irish newspapers and political and religious leaders. Patrick Donohue’s Boston Pilot, the ‘Irishman’s bible,’ enthusiastically supported the war to restore the Union. Archbishop John Joseph Hughes of New York, the ‘bishop and chief’ of the New York Irish whose influence was nationwide, also urged his flock to help suppress the rebellion. But early in the war he pointedly warned the Lincoln administration that if Irish-American soldiers had ‘to fight for the abolition of slavery, then, indeed, they will turn away in disgust from the discharge of what would otherwise be a patriotic duty.’

New York was home to the two most famous Irish names in the nation, Michael Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher. Corcoran, colonel of the 69th New York State Militia, had won fame, or condemnation, for refusing to present his regiment for review when the Prince of Wales visited the city in 1860. Relieved of command for disobedience, Corcoran was facing court-martial when the war necessitated his reassignment to the regiment. The 69th was one of the first volunteer units to reach Washington in the secession spring, and fought well at First Bull Run, where Corcoran was captured. The feisty commander refused to give his parole, and remained a prisoner in Richmond until exchanged over a year later, emerging as the first Irish hero of the struggle.

That left Meagher, whose conduct at Bull Run is still being debated, to take the lead in raising Irish troops for the new two- and three-year units authorized to replace the three-month volunteers. The ambitious Meagher, who played the Irish card to advance his own political interests, energetically began to organize what would become the Irish Brigade, patterned after the Irish brigades which fought for the Catholic powers of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Meagher hoped the nascent brigade would become the nucleus of an Irish division. He won critical approval for the endeavor from Archbishop Hughes, even though the prelate voiced private misgivings. Ethnic regiments, Hughes confided to friends, were apt to fan ethnic divisiveness and lead to problems. But with Hughes’ public backing, Meagher soon persuaded New York’s governor, Edwin Morgan, to support the raising of Irish regiments that would be combined into a brigade. Meagher signed up 3,000 volunteers in New York, winning a brigadier generalcy for himself in the process. The Irish Brigade that emerged in November 1861 was organized around three New York units: a reconstituted 69th New York, which effectively formed the brigade’s core, was joined by the newly created 63rd and 88th regiments.

A number of support organizations soon emerged dedicated to maintaining the Irish regiments and their families. Women took active roles in such associations, involving themselves in matters ranging from support for the soldiers’ families to presentations of the distinctive green battle flags. The 63rd New York took to calling itself ‘Mrs. Meagher’s Own’ after she presented the unit with its first stand of colors. Maria Daly, wife of prominent jurist and social and political leader Charles P. Daly, headed a committee to acquire a green standard from Tiffany & Co. for the 69th New York. Later, when the butcher’s bill from Antietam and Fredericksburg came due, Mrs. Daly undertook to expand health care for wounded brigade members near the front and at home in New York.

Among the indirect casualties of the brigade’s battles was the large number of orphans and homeless children. The Catholic Protectory for Homeless and Wayward Children opened in May 1863 to provide for their needs. By the end of the year, it was caring for 1,000 youngsters. Likewise Catholic nuns, predominately Irish, served as military nurses at the front and in hospitals in New York.

Governor John J. Andrew of Massachusetts, lobbied by both New York’s Irish leaders and the Pilot’s Donohue, agreed to the creation of three Irish regiments, the 9th, 28th and 29th Massachusetts. The latter two were quickly combined into one regiment, the 28th Massachusetts, which was attached to the Irish Brigade in December 1862 just before Fredericksburg. In Pennsylvania prominent businessman Dennis Heenan received permission to form a unit of Irish soldiers. Recruiting went slowly until Corcoran, finally exchanged in August 1862, visited Philadelphia, where his fiery speeches led to a spike in enlistments. Originally called the ‘Brian Boru United Irish Legion,’ the unit was officially designated the 116th Pennsylvania and rounded out the roster of regiments in the Irish Brigade.

Of the approximately 140,000 Irish-born soldiers in the Federal armies, about one-third came from New York. Ambitious Irish New Yorkers fanned out across the country, encouraging state governors to approve the Irish formations in other states while securing commands for themselves. Scattered Irish regiments were formed in the West, but the East provided the bulk of officially designated Irish units.

As the final elements fell into place for the fielding of the Irish Brigade, New York created another brigade of Irishmen. Promoted to brigadier while a prisoner, Corcoran had returned from Confederate captivity as the leading Irish hero, whose presumed importance was enough to rate him an invitation to dinner with Lincoln. Although the two were old friends and comrades in Irish nationalist causes, Corcoran had no intention of leaving Meagher in command of the largest Irish military organization. He was soon recruiting for the Corcoran Legion, also called the Irish Legion and sometimes known as the ‘Second Irish Brigade.’ The flow of volunteers was slower than anticipated, since the pool of potential enlistees was shrunken due to Meagher’s endeavors, and Irish skepticism about the war remained strong. Nevertheless, the magic of Corcoran’s name attracted enough men to create four additional Irish regiments, the 155th, 164th, 170th and 180th New York.

Although many regiments in the Federal army possessed an ethnic character in the sense of being made up primarily of soldiers from one national group, the Irish units were unique. No other ethnic group was allowed to create and field officially designated ethnic regiments as the Irish did. There were numerous regiments in the Union Army that were considered German, the other large immigrant group at the time. But they were German by membership, officers and sometimes language. They were not officially named German regiments, and no such thing as a ‘German Brigade’ or ‘Karl Schurtz legion’ existed. Nor did the German-dominated regiments carry flags emblazoned with the symbols of their ancestral homeland.

With the exception of the 116th Pennsylvania, which carried the state flag, the regiments in the Irish Brigade and Corcoran Legion carried the Irish green flag with gold harp, usually with a Gaelic battle cry added for effect. The special consideration extended to the Irish in creation of those units testified to their political power and the eagerness of political figures, from Lincoln down to state legislators, to channel Irish energies into support for the Union cause.

Recruiting appeals for the Irish regiments centered on several points. For openers, Irish leaders such as Meagher and Corcoran insisted that their men were natural born fighters, a claim repeated so often that both the Irish and non-Irish came to believe it. The image of the ‘fighting Irish’ became so embedded in Civil War tradition that 100 years after the conflict historian Bell Irvin Wiley, in his Life of Billy Yank, stated, ‘It is quite possible that their predominant urge was sheer love of combat.’ The Irish were also enjoined to fight for both the honor of the old country and the salvation of their new, adopted country. Such blandishments were not unusual, and recruiters among the other ethnic groups used similar arguments. German regiments, for example, included many former soldiers who believed their experience made them more formidable in combat than native-born Americans, let alone the Irish. This sense of ethnic rivalry sometimes encouraged enlistment as well. But the inducements aimed at the Irish contained two elements absent from those aimed at other Northerners. The first was religion. A major attraction for Irish volunteers was the guarantee of a Catholic chaplain. The second was a sense of Irish nationalism, whose analog was seldom if ever found among the other immigrant communities.

Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts

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