The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861–1865 (review)

Incredible as it may seem, there are still aspects of Civil War history that scholars have written very little about. One of these is the experiences of prominent ethnic communities in the war, particularly those of the Irish and German Americans, who together contributed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the Union cause. Susannah Ural Bruce attempts to fill in at least part of this gap with her work on Irish soldiers in the Union army. Hers is not the usual account of the military heroics of Irish soldiers in battle. Rather, she focuses on the way Irish Americans, both in the army and at home, viewed the war "through Irish lenses" (41). It "is a broad examination of the way Irish Catholic men and their communities understood [their] service in the Union Army" (2).

Bruce's focus is on Irish motivation for the war and on the divided loyalties the Irish felt during it. Bruce argues that they maintained dual loyalties throughout the war, viewing the struggle in light of their interests as both Irishmen and Americans. As long as these did not diverge, their support for the war remained strong, but when they began to run in different directions (as they did from very early in the war), Irish war support waned. As Irish units suffered terrible casualty rates, as natives ceased to recognize their sacrifices, as Irish heroes like McClellan were removed from command, and as the war became a fight for African American emancipation, their immigrant Irish identity began to take precedence over their American one. A crucial turning point came in the year 1863, with its commitment to emancipation and the introduction of conscription. Natives, especially after the draft riots in July, returned to their old negative stereotypes of the Irish, and the Irish, believing their sacrifices to the Union cause had become too costly and were increasingly unappreciated, ceased making them. By the end of the war it seemed the Irish had lost whatever credit they might have earned by their service to the Union.

In her final chapter, Bruce traces the group successes made by the Irish in the economy, politics, and the military in postwar America, but she does not ascribe these gains to their military service in the Union cause. Although she argues that they managed to blend together their Irish and American again by the end of the century, Irish Catholics had suffered from continuing discrimination despite their wartime sacrifices. Whatever gains they made were achieved by wielding the power of their ethnic and religiously unified community, not by opportunities given by an American society that appreciated their loyalty. In fact, the Irish often had to defend their war service from detractors who criticized their military contributions to the Union cause.

Bruce's work is necessarily handicapped by the lack of diaries and letters from Irish American soldiers, as are those of all who work in this field. She must find the Irish voice primarily in the words of Irish newspaper editors and a handful of prominent Irish Americans whose thoughts have survived. To her credit, she understands the problem and knows that such sources cannot speak for everyone in the community. And unlike many previous writers, she emphasizes the variety of responses the Irish made to the war, particularly emphasizing how religion and region affected their perspectives. The Protestant Irish did not see things as Catholics did, and the Irish in the West and Midwest had different perspectives from those in eastern cities.

There are times, however, when Bruce's work might have benefited from a comparative perspective, especially with native-born soldiers. When she notes that recruiting in the Irish community became more difficult in the second year of war, she is making a statement that could readily apply to native-born troops as well. Similarly, when later in the...