Irish Americans and the Union War

This chapter examines how Irish-American Unionism increasingly butted heads with the Irish-American critique of antislavery during the first year of the Civil War. Across the loyal states, Irish Americans rallied around the Union war effort in 1861. As they did, many explained their support for the Union war effort with reference to the tenets of Irish-American Unionism that took shape over the previous decade, especially as events on both sides of the Atlantic lent credence to their belief that Irish people had a particular stake in the welfare of the American Union. Yet however enthusiastic Irish Americans were about restoring the Union, the antebellum Irish-American critique of antislavery rendered them skeptical of the Republican president and the Republican-majority Congress that directed the Union war effort. That skepticism was amplified by claims that Irish soldiers were mistreated by native-born commanders and by a series of antislavery measures enacted during the war’s first year. Even some Irish Americans expressed misgivings over the Union war effort grew by 1862, Irish-American soldiers’ encounters with free and enslaved African Americans convinced many of them that emancipation could aid their efforts to subdue the Confederate rebellion.