Ryan Keating lectured on Irish in the American Civil War during the Civil War Institute. Keating is a professor of history at California State University San Bernadino where he teaches the Civil War Era. He has authored three books on Civil War topics including Shades of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers, and Local Communities in the Civil War Era.
Keating began by telling the story of the Irish Brigade assault on the Sunken Road at Antietam which left four hundred members of it dead or wounded. Next came Fredericksburg which resulted in four hundred and fifty casualties. As one veteran recalled “Irish blood and Irish bones covered the field that day…with no result but defeat.” A Confederate officer later said “the Irish Brigade would receive our well-directed fire steady and firm. When great gaps were cut through their ranks…they reformed under the incessant fire they would come again…” At Gettysburg the Brigade had just over five hundred men in the ranks, with 202 casualties in the Wheatfield. Just a couple of weeks later came news of the rioting against the Draft in New York City. “Men who had eagerly rushed to the defense of the Union in 1861 reconsidered their support for a war in which Irish soldiers were slaughtered like sheep,” says Keating. The professor says that the riots, after the three great battles from September 1862 to July 1863, have traditionally been used to define the rise and fall of Irish support for the war and are “believed to represent Irish anger over the changes in the war aims” after the Emancipation Proclamation.
In this narrative. says Keating, “the Irish sacrifice on the battlefield is largely overlooked in favor of the revival of Nativism and lingering questions of assimilation.” The Irish experience in the Civil War is largely defined, says Keating, by the sacrifice of the Irish soldiers and the perception that they were cannon fodder. Only two brigades in the Union Army lost more men than did the Irish Brigade and it was often at the center of many battles along the Richmond to Washington Front. Modern people are also attracted to study the Irish Brigade because of the large number of people who claim to have Irish ancestry which is tied to the “tragedy of the Irish experience and the Irish American experience,” says Keating.
The prominence of the Famine and the sadness of immigration experience of the 1840s has remained in the Irish imagination over the last 150 years, as well as the harshness of the English response and mistreatment. For modern Irish Americans, the story of the Irish immigrants has appeal because it is one of overcoming adversity. It describes being blighted by famine and coming to America where they were crowded into overcrowded apartments and, later, tenements.
The rise of the Know Nothings in the 1850s reflected a fear that Irish would cause instability if allowed to participate in American society. In 1861 the advent of war provided an opportunity to show proof of loyalty to the nation. But the struggle for scholars is that “through the lens of the Irish Brigade does not appear to lend itself to acceptance.” This was increasing true after the Draft Riots and through the revival of Nativism after the war.
Keating says that when he began looking into Irish during the Civil War, “this was the narrative with which I began my own research.” Many other researchers had stereotyped views of Irish at the time of the Civil War. They viewed Irish Americans as alienated from America. Second that they were poor Irish volunteers from a single urban ethnic neighborhood…that service would lead to their inclusion. Third that Irish collectively withdrew their support for the war after the Summer of 1863,” said Keating.
Professor Keating focused on three non-Irish Brigade regiments with large numbers of Irishmen in them. These were the 9th Connecticut, 17th Wisconsin, and the 23rd Illinois. “These regiments all served loyally throughout the war and the experience of the soldiers illustrates that the volunteers and those back at home faced complex realities linked to both international and national worldviews but that were tied to their local communities and local experiences,” said Professor Keating.
Keating picked these regiments because none served in the Irish Brigade nor the Army of the Potomac at any point during the war. All these regiments did have personal connections to the Irish Brigade since many of the officers in these regiments were part of the Fenian movement and in other ways. “Each were organized in states with a relatively large Irish presence,” said Keating, but these were not in the states that scholars have studied as intensively as the Irish communities in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. “The New York experience was, and is, exceptional,” said Keating. If a modern visitor from another country came to New York City and said “this is how all Americans lived” we would see that as a flawed analysis today and in the 1860s.
“All three units identified as Irish regiments, all three flew green flags, all had Catholic chaplains, and many of the officers identified as part of the Fenian movement. All three served heroically on battlefields and were championed at home for their loyal service to the Union,” Keating said.
The 23rd Illinois was formed by Colonel Mulligan, a prominent Chicago lawyer with ties to the Fenians. When the regiment was accepted by the Federal government, notes poured in from throughout the Midwest offering companies formed in various communities to this regiment.
In Connecticut, the Ninth was organized in late April of 1861 after Lincoln called for manpower to respond to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. “Enthusiasm of the Irish residents for the Union was overwhelming,” says Keating. This was in spite of discrimination shown by the state to Irish militia units before. A Connecticut priest told his congregation to join the Union Army; “This is the first country that Irishmen have ever had that they could call their own.”
In Wisconsin, the community was late in organizing a regiment. There was a lack of clear Irish leadership in Wisconsin. Many secular leaders had died in a shipwreck. The Irish in Wisconsin had lived in other states before moving to Wisconsin and they had more property than in other states. The state’s remaining Irish Democrats quickly condemned secession.
Keating says that in these three regiments, the leadership was connected to each other and to a larger Irish community and that they had ideological connections as well and that military service was seen as part of this bigger picture. But each had its own individual characteristics. Unlike some units from New York, for these three regiments there is not a single neighborhood or ward that supported the development of each regiment. When we look at the places the men from these regiments came from, many of the people living there were not born in Ireland. So, for the 9th Connecticut, there was not a neighborhood that had such a large population of Irish to confine recruitment only to that neighborhood. For the Illinois regiment, there were men from communities hundreds of miles away who were recruited, from Indiana and Michigan as well as Illinois.
While these regiments were officially designated as “Irish,” in the 9th Connecticut about 55% were Irish born, said Keating. In the Wisconsin regiment, only 30% were born in Ireland. Keating said that some native-born men enlisted in these units because enlisting in an Irish regiment “sounded cool” because of the view that Irish were tough and also because they had Irish friends who enlisted in these regiments and they wanted to serve with them. Of course, some of the recruits were second generation, the native-born sons of Irish immigrants.
Economically, Irish immigrants out “West” in Illinois and Wisconsin had a higher economic standing than they did in New York. 70% of Irish men were unskilled in New York City, In Milwaukee, less than half of the Irish men were unskilled laborers and more than half owned property. In these three regiments, there were poor people in the ranks, but the majority had learned skills and were coming up in America. These men were more accepted in the local communities that they came from. Both Irish and native-born cheered these companies as they went off to war.
When the Draft Riots broke out in New York City in 1863, immigrants in all three states these regiments came from denounced the rioters. Men in the three regiments called for the perpetrators to be hunted down and jailed or hung.
Contrary to many narratives of Irish life in the 1860s, these units stayed strongly pro-Union until the war ended, and beyond.
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