Irish Americans in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Irish Americans in the American Civil War carried the weight of two worlds at once. They had crossed an ocean to escape famine, only to find themselves caught in America's most devastating conflict. Between 1861 and 1865, Irish-American Roman Catholics served on both sides of the war as officers, volunteers, and draftees. The questions this documentary will explore are not simple ones. Why did men who had barely escaped one catastrophe march into another? What made them fight, and what made others resist? And what happened when the war ended and those same men turned the skills they had learned toward a different kind of struggle entirely?

• 2. Before the War

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  Six signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Irish and Ulster Scot descent. One of them, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was the only Catholic signer. Irish presence in America stretched back to colonial times, but the great wave came with the Irish Great Famine of 1845-1852. Poverty and harsh landlords drove Catholic Irish to emigrate in huge numbers through the mid-nineteenth century.

  An Irish immigrant arriving in America found a difficult and unfamiliar situation. Most were poor and unused to American customs. Yet in cities with large Irish populations, those customs began to shift. An immigrant named Patrick Murphy captured the transformation plainly: "New York is a grand handsome city. But you would hardly know you had left Ireland." What had been utterly foreign became blended with traditional ways, forming a distinct Irish-American culture that would carry its own loyalties into the war years ahead.

• 3. Serving the Union

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  Seven Union generals were Irish-born, and an estimated 150,000 Irish-Americans fought for the Union during the war. The Irish presence was felt at the very opening of the conflict. The two first recorded combat deaths at Fort Sumter in April 1861 were both Irish-born men: Danial Hough, from Tipperary, and Edward Galloway, from Cork. They were mortally wounded in the explosion of one of the fort's 100-gun magazines during the ceremony meant to mark the Union's withdrawal with a 100-gun salute, a salute cut to 50 because of the accident. Hough died shortly after and was buried in the parade ground. Galloway died five days later.

  Irish-Americans in the Union states often formed their own regiments. The 69th New York State Volunteers flew a green flag with a golden harp, and carried that flag alongside the normal regimental and national colors. That arrangement likely made the 69th the only regiment to carry five colors into battle during the entire war. After the First Battle of Bull Run, the unit was incorporated into a larger formation called the Irish Brigade. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the brigade charged up Marye's Heights and suffered 41.4% casualties. Before facing Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg in 1863, the Irish Brigade held a Catholic mass.

  The 9th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, attached to the 5th Corps, was formed largely of Irish immigrants from the Boston area. Its first commander, Colonel Thomas Cass, was himself born in County Laois. He died in 1862 after receiving wounds at the Battle of Malvern Hill. The regiment lost 15 officers and 194 enlisted men in combat, plus 3 officers and 66 enlisted men to disease, and fought at Mechanicsville, Gaines's Mill, Malvern Hill, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and held a supporting action at Big Round Top during Gettysburg.

  Even at the war's end, the Irish presence carried forward. James O'Beirne, born in County Roscommon and a Captain in the 37th New York Infantry, organized the initial manhunt for John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators after Lincoln's assassination. O'Beirne had been seriously wounded in the lung at Chancellorsville. Though he was not present for Booth's final capture, Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton noted his role.

• 4. The Confederate Irish

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  Six Confederate generals were Irish-born. The highest ranking among them was Patrick Cleburne. Units such as the Charleston Irish Volunteers drew Confederate Irish-Americans in South Carolina. The 24th Georgia Volunteer Infantry followed General Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, while Irish Tennesseans could join the 10th Tennessee Infantry Regiment. The Louisiana Tigers, first raised by Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, counted a large number of Irish-American members.

  Company E of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, known as the Emerald Guard and part of the Stonewall Brigade, was composed of Irish immigrant volunteers. They may have been the first to make the infamous Rebel Yell at the First Battle of Bull Run, attacking 14th New York guns on Henry Hill. The Davis Guard, a company of mostly Irish-American men from the Houston and Galveston area, won a decisive victory at the Second Battle of Sabine Pass in 1863. As recognition, they received the only physical medals awarded by the Confederacy, made from polished Mexican silver coins and hung from green ribbons to honor their Irish heritage.

  A song called "Kelly's Irish Brigade" named a Confederate unit commanded by Colonel Joseph Kelly of the Missouri Volunteer Militia. The same song title was also applied to the Union Irish Brigade and its commander Patrick Kelly, which created a lasting dispute about attribution. Both versions were considered songs of the era.

  Perhaps the most striking scene of the entire war came from the night before the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1863. An Irish regiment in Union service, camped on the banks of the Rappahannock River, began singing Dear Old Ireland by their campfires. Across the river, a Confederate Irish regiment heard them. The Confederates took up the chorus. Michael MacDonagh, writing in "The Irish at the Front," described how the Union Irishmen listened in stunned silence before realizing, with wild surprise, that the song was being answered by fellow Irishmen wearing the enemy's uniform.

• 5. The Draft Riots

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  On the 3rd of March 1863, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, requiring single male citizens and male aliens who had applied for citizenship, aged 20 to 45, and married men up to age 35, to register for the draft. Many Irish immigrants had accepted United States citizenship without understanding that citizenship also made them liable to be drafted. When they realized it, the anger was immediate.

  The fury sharpened when Black men, mostly freed slaves, were excluded from the same draft. Irish workers feared that freed slaves from the South would migrate North and compete for the jobs that poor immigrants relied on. Adding to the resentment were the policies of substitution and commutation, which allowed drafted men to avoid service by either finding a substitute or paying $300. These provisions were designed to ease pressure from the anti-draft movement and the propertied classes, but they produced a phrase that spread through Irish working communities: this was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

  On the 6th of March 1863, just days after the Enrollment Act passed, the Detroit Race Riot of 1863 erupted as Irish rioters protested the draft. Four months later, on the 13th of July 1863, as the first New York City draft lottery was being held, the mostly Irish working class of the city ignited the 1863 New York City draft riots. Stores were looted. Newspaper offices that supported the Union were ransacked and burned. The New York State Militia was absent, having been sent to help repel General Lee's Confederate Army in Pennsylvania, leaving only the city police to respond.

  The police were outnumbered by roughly ten to one. Two days into the riot, word came that the draft had been suspended. Federal troops returning from Gettysburg were sent to restore order. Peace returned to New York City more than a day after those troops arrived. An estimated 120 people died in the draft riots, making them the deadliest civil insurrection in American history.

• 6. After the War

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  When the war ended, a significant number of Irish-American veterans did not simply return to civilian life. The military experience they had gained during four years of combat gave them tools they would use for a different purpose. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenian Brotherhood, and Clan na Gael organized several post-war conflicts aimed at establishing an independent Irish Republic.

  The most notable of these efforts were the Fenian Rising in British Ireland and the Fenian Raids into Canada. Veterans who had learned to command troops, plan attacks, and sustain operations over years of warfare now brought that knowledge to a nationalist cause. The Civil War had trained thousands of men in ways that the leaders of Irish independence movements had never had access to before. Patrick Cleburne, the highest-ranking Confederate general born in Ireland, did not live to see these efforts; he died during the war. But others who survived carried the lessons of American battlefields back across the Atlantic and north across the Canadian border.