Irish-American Unionism and Slavery

This chapter explains how a unique strain of Unionism among the American Irish shaped their perspectives on the sectional conflict over slavery that escalated between 1850 and 1854. Irish-American Unionism emerged from convergences in Irish and American history during the mid-1800s that led influential journalists and exiled nationalists to view the perpetuity of the American Union as critical to the political and economic prospects of Irish immigrants and the cause of Irish independence. As it did, the Union itself seemed imperilled by an increasingly rancorous debate over the future of American slavery, one that was exacerbated by the arrival of the Irish temperance leader and erstwhile abolitionist Father Theobald Mathew in 1850. Deploying the Irish critique of abolitionism, Irish Americans blamed antislavery reformers for fanning the flames of disunion and thereby threatening the welfare of Irish people on both sides of the Atlantic. While many Irish Americans proved willing to accede to the demands of proslavery southerners in order to preserve the American Union, they ultimately rejected the idea—endorsed in 1854 by the prominent Young Ireland exile John Mitchel—that slavery was a positive good.