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

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Francis Meagher may have been a bloviating fraud, but he was atypical of the Irish Brigade’s commanders. The casualty lists tell the story. Colonel Richard Byrne was killed at Cold Harbor, and Colonel Patrick Kelly at Petersburg. Irish-born Thomas Smyth, who commanded the brigade at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania before being transferred to the 2nd Division, fell at High Bridge on April 8, 1865. He had the dubious distinction of being the last Federal general killed in action. Colonel Matthew Murphy, commander of the Irish Legion, also fell in the last days of the war.

Though Irish popular opinion was divided, and enthusiasm for the war and enlistments fell after 1863, the legends of the fighting Irish were more than mere propaganda. Despite the flawed personalities who organized them and the political and urban divisions that divided them, the Irish Brigade, Corcoran Legion and other Irish regiments such as the 9th Massachusetts and 23rd Illinois carved out a reputation for steadfastness and bravery equal to the best native-born units in the war. Even old-stock officers not totally given over to anti-Irish sentiment by prejudice admitted their effectiveness. Theodore Lyman, Meade’s volunteer staff officer and a friend of Barlow, maintained, ‘The Paddies…will go in finely, and if well officered, stand to it through everything.’ And they stood through a lot. The three New York Irish regiments in the Irish Brigade were among a select list of 63 Federal units throughout the war that lost at least 50 percent of their men in a single engagement.

The influence of Fenianism, religion and ethnic separatism waned over the course of the war as the Irish units shared common experiences with their fellow soldiers. Yet they never entirely lost their identity — officers like Barlow and Shaw made that difficult anyway. Although the elite of New York and Boston belittled Irish efforts, they could not tarnish the luster that was earned at the Sunken Road, Marye’s Heights, the Peach Orchard and the Wilderness. Nor could they diminish the honor won by the thousands whose bones moldered in the battlefields of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. In June 1865, when the Irish Brigade returned to New York, only 700 men marched through the city in its ranks.

Like that of most Northerners, the Irish response to the call to arms was determined by their own experience and interests. Scarred by the nativist movement in the 1840s and 1850s and believing their tenuous position in American society was threatened by cheap black labor, many held aloof or opposed the war effort. As James McPherson succinctly put it, many Irish saw the war as ‘waged by Yankee Protestants for black freedom,’ and they disliked both the cause and those leading it.

But many other Irish embraced the war effort either as volunteers for the army or in the various civilian groups that supported them. Whatever the Boston Pilot might declare, or the draft rioters sully, the legacy of the Irish at war was embodied and epitomized by the few depleted remnants of once proud regiments that returned to Boston, New York and Chicago with their battle flags in tatters.

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

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