Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. by William B. Kurtz (review)

William Kurtz's new study of Catholics in the Civil War era and how the conflict contributed to the creation of a separate Catholic identity justifies the lavish praise found on the book's back cover. It is a solidly researched study, balancing a healthy amount of archival sources and printed primary sources, period newspapers, and the best (although by no means all) of the secondary sources available. Kurtz, like Susannah Ural before him with her well-known The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861–1865 (2006), conducted a sizable amount of research overseas in Irish repositories, and he even managed to plumb the famous Auswandererbriefesammlung in Gotha, Germany, which was the source for Walter Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich's edited and translated letter collection, Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home (2006). But Kurtz also demonstrates in his work a careful rereading of tried-and-true domestic primary source materials, especially ethnic and religious newspapers like the Boston Pilot and the Catholic Herald of Philadelphia. In so doing, he continues the trend of strong research that is evident in recent titles published by Fordham's series on the North in the Civil War. The book, which is also well written with a crisp prose that drags only in a few sections, is divided into eight chapters, a useful introduction and conclusion, and appendices on the known Catholic newspapers, priests who served as chaplains in the Union army, and female Catholic organizations that contributed nurses to the Federal cause.

Kurtz's major thesis is that antebellum anti-Catholic nativism, borne of Anglo-Americans' fears of Irish and German Catholic immigrants changing American culture, prompted most northern Catholics initially to support the Union war effort to prove their loyalty and defend their faith through patriotism. But as the war progressed, casualties among Catholic soldiers mounted, emancipation and the draft became contentious issues (especially among Irish Catholics), and prejudice against Catholic immigrant soldiers continued unabated. Thus, by the end of the war, northern Catholics overall had undergone an alienating experience that only reinforced their allegiance to their faith and, in some areas, retarded their assimilation process into greater American society. In the postwar decades, Irish Catholic veterans attempted to varnish their often unpleasant wartime service by celebrating a more optimistic memory of their experiences under arms, one that frequently fused with a greater celebration of Irish ethnic contributions to the war.

Kurtz explains how and why Catholics enlisted in Irish and nonethnic regiments alike, priests and nuns volunteered as chaplains and nurses, bishops politically bolstered home-front fervor for the Union, and newspaper editors became barometers (or directors) of Catholic opinion on the northern war effort. His first chapter, on the Mexican War and nativism against Catholics, is a significant contribution to the literature in its own right and sets the stage nicely for the rest of the book. The second chapter examines Catholic motivations and responses during the secession winter and first year of the war, including the lively dissension that existed among antiwar editors and clergy and those supporting the Lincoln administration. There is not a great deal of new material here that has not already been covered elsewhere, but Kurtz's inclusion of German Catholics in his analysis is refreshing and novel. Throughout the book, in fact, he carefully includes German Catholic perspectives wherever possible, even if the evidence base is weak or was difficult to access (which is no fault of the author). The third chapter, on Catholic soldiers in the Union army, is highly satisfying on one level and frustrating on another. Kurtz offers a superb analysis of how Irish Catholics in blue felt about major wartime issues, such as the advent of black soldiers and prejudice exhibited by Protestants, but falls short in evaluating their actual battlefield...