Celts, Catholics, and Copperheads: Ireland Views the American Civil War (review)

ROOK REVIEWS365 from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast and from the Mexican to the Canadian borders. Indian opposition to white encroachment brought open warfare and placed an almost intolerable strain on the slender "peacetime" military estabUshment. The scale of opposition, die extremes of chinate and terrain and the vast distances involved, all called for an expanded military arm but Congress proved unwilling to support an adequate effort either in size, or appropriate organizational changes. As in the past the halls of Congress echoed with cries of economy, fears of a large standing army and praise of volunteer forces. Successful campaigning, particularly against the mobile tribes of the Great Plains and the Apaches of the Southwest, also proved difficult in view of tardy adaption by the miUtary of strategy and tactics suitable to the demands of guerrilla warfare. Efficient operations were further hampered by a seniority system that saw ability at the lower levels frustrated by incompetence, senility, or worse, at the higher echelons of command. Low pay, brutal treatment, monotony, Uquor, disease and desertion plagued the enUsted ranks and the end result was that for many years commanders took the field with few advantages over tiieir antagonists other tiian superior weapons and firepower. Despite these severe handicaps, by 1865 the frontier army could look back on two decades of considerable accompUshment. By the end of the 1850's a network of posts spanned half a continent providing a framework so durable that it lasted until die Indian wars ended thirty years later. Similarly, the western command organization , estabU'shed in 1853, also stood the test of time. Strategy and tactics had been devised that provided the keys to miUtary victory in the post-Civü War period—swift-striking cavalry columns, total war and unrelenting pressure, particularly during the winter. Further, knowledge of the country had been greatly enhanced and there was hardly a favored Indian haunt that had not resounded to gunfire or the sound of marching feet. In this soüdly researched, engrossing, and comprehensive book, Utley never loses sight of the total concept, yet gives the reader a wealth of detail, including incisive analyses of such figures as Kit Carson, James Carleton, Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, John E. Wool and numerous others. Frontiersmen in Blue is a welcome addition to the miUtary history of the West. William H. Leckie University of Toledo Celts, Catholics, and Copperheads: Ireland Views the American Civil War. By Joseph M. Hernon, Jr. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968. Pp. vüi, 150. $6.25. ) Professor Hernon has very capably explored an obviously significant field of study which to date has been sadly neglected. In 1861, at the outbreak •of the American Civil War, Irishmen comprised the most numerous immigrant class in the United States. They also became the largest foreign ele- 366CIVIL WAR HISTORY ment in the armies of both the Union and the Confederacy. It was not unusual, therefore, that the people of Ireland should have been more emotionally and intimately concerned with the fratricidal strife between the states than most other Europeans. Although the greater part of this book is devoted to a study of the impact of die American Civil War upon various poUtical factions in Ireland, IrishAmerican opinion is not ignored. The latter's antipathy towards the aboUtionists in America is credited to a variety of factors; the conservatism of die CadioUc Church in the United States, the hostility of aboUtionists Uke Hinton Helper toward Irish-Americans, and the historic alliance between the Irish and the traditionally anti-British Democratic party. However, Hernon suggests that the paramount factor influencing Irish-American attitudes on aboUtion was basically an economic one, namely the fear a workingclass people had for the consequences which emancipation might bring to the labor market. Among the more valuable aspects of Professor Hernon's book are the insights which it affords with respect to the complex and often contradictory policies espoused by nineteenth-century Uberals and nationalists during the Civil War era. Irish nationalist sympathies were divided between the North and the South at the outbreak of the war. While the moderate nationalists were almost unanimously in support of the secessionists, many revolutionary nationalists switched...