–Most Irish were not gang members. Take some time to do research in primary sources, readily available online. Don't take your 'history' from movies like Gangs of NY. This is really sloppy historiography.

–Don't judge Irish participation in the Civil War by just the few regiments named. Here's a typical example. My great-grandfather from the Old First Ward in lower Manhattan, went off as a boy with the Irish Brigade. He was at Antietam and Fredericksburg. He did not continue with the Irish Brigade but joined up with the 13th NY Heavy Artillery in September 1863, fighting thru the end of the war with Irish and other nationalities. He contracted malaria and later died of it.

From 1830 onward there was a loud and inescapable propaganda war to define Catholicism as foreign and troublesome. The fact that most Americans had come out of Catholic backgrounds, not too many generations back, went down the Memory Hole of denial; as did the origins of Maryland and the fact that the first significant colonial British governor of New York was Lord Thomas Dongan.

Even today one frequently reads that the 1863 New York "Draft Riots" were caused by "poor Irish Catholic immigrants" who cruelly hanged Negroes from lampposts because they feared competition in the "low-paid jobs they were forced to do" (as priests? firemen?). Those uprisings were neither disproportionately "Irish" nor "Catholic." But this sort of characterization allows one to marginalize old political debates without looking at the facts.

"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."

You should correct this error, for it misleads The People. Google "England's Irish Catholic Slaves" for a more accurate account. From the 1620s (when my lineage escaped Scotland for Country Cork, Ireland, in order to remain Catholic and survive) the English Monarcy had been invading Ireland. Their (my) people were taken and shipped about the world, in order to tend the King's farms.

So bad was the Irish – English War in 1640, that of 1.6 Million Irish residents, 600,000 were killed, with another 300,000 sent abroad as slaves.

By 1650, there were more Irish Catholic slaves in America than there were English colonial farm owners.

And I also take exception with your use of the phrase "Potato Famine" — unless famines are forced upon a population after ports are blocked by a foreign nation, who also seized the farm land.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted to the King's Genocide in Ireland during the mid 1800s, so it would be kind to be more accurate, and offer a correction to your "story."

Finally, though England may have stopped the King's trade in the early 1800s relative African slaves, they sure didn't end their Irish Catholic slave trade. They even figured out to breed the African Slaves with Irish females in order to sell their off-spring. Just ask Shaq O'Neal…

"If we forget the lessons of the past, we are doomed to repeat them" and GOD knows no one wants a repeat of that type history.

As it were, Catholics are the largest denomination, not only here in America, but in the World. Combined with other sects, and Christians are FAR more numerous than even the Muslims.

Have a blessed New Year!

PS Read

Irish people sent around the globe as slaves — which this article seems to ignore.

By 1650, there were 300,000 Irish Catholic slaves in America alone, even more people than the English colonials had tending their farms.

And they didn't cost a dime…. but were taken.

And Notre Dame became most notorious, after their students defeated the KKK in the 1920s. Google "Notre Dame Vs the KKK"

For example, mostly Irish Ohio Regts from Cincinnati; Illinois Regts from Chicago (23rd/24th); independent Companies like the "Jasper Greens" form Savannah, GA; the 2nd LA Regt form Baton Rouge; and 24th GA have well documented records.

Many thousands of Irish immigrant soldiers also served in other non-Irish or mixed military units (North and South) like my ancestor who served with the 30th Mass Vol Inf Regt in the Gulf and Vicksburg campaigns (1862-2863) and the Veteran (Invalid) Reserve Corps.

D-Dory Cap'n