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Chapter 2. The Fighting Irish
- The University of Tennessee Press
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2 The Fighting Irish Contrary to early Fenian expectations that the Civil War would abet the Irish nationalist cause, Southern secession ultimately undermined Stephens and O’Mahony’s efforts to expel the British from Ireland by expediting expatriate assimilation into American society. A de facto Anglo-Confederate alliance gave Irish American federal soldiers hope that Ireland and the United States could forge their own alliance and eventually drive the British out of Ireland. Although Famine-era émigrés were proportionally under-represented in both the Union and Confederate armies, the wartime military service of Fenians and other expatriates increasingly garnered the grudging respect of Yankee community leaders and plantation patriarchs, who had historically disparaged all Catholic immigrants.1 Anti–Irish Catholic sentiment remained prevalent both within and outside the military during the War between the States, but decreasing nativist sentiment in the 1860s encouraged thousands of émigrés to limit their Irish patriotic expression to attending picnics and lectures. Because true Fenians remained a devoted minority within the transatlantic Irish community in 1865, O’Mahony’s decision to consistently endorse the Union war effort was arguably counterproductive, as it promoted Irish acculturation and acceptance into American society. After initially fearing that the outbreak of the Civil War would distract expatriates from their cause, Fenian leaders on both sides of the Atlantic concluded that Union or Confederate army military service would expose prospective Irish rebels to combat before proceeding to Ireland to engage the British Army. As Thomas Francis Meagher argued, “If only one in ten of us come back when this war is over, the military experience gained by that one will be of more service in a The Fighting Irish 30 fight for Irish freedom than would that of the entire ten as they are now.”2 Rebel supporter John Mitchel echoed this sentiment by stating, “I think it highly desirable that young Irishmen should learn the art of war, somewhere, seeing that it is a transportable offence to learn it at home.”3 The possibility that a substantial number of Irishmen would die fighting for the North or the South rather than for Ireland was largely discounted by these men and many others who first believed that the Civil War would be resolved in a matter of weeks. For a variety of ideological reasons that often had little to do with Irish politics, about one hundred and ninety thousand Hibernians would ultimately enlist in the Union and Confederate armies. An Anglo-Confederate alliance had given hope to Irish American nationalists . Expatriate federal soldiers hoped that Ireland and the United States could forge their own alliance and eventually drive the British out of Ireland, while providing expatriates residing in the North with the opportunity to defend the United States Constitution and emulate Irishmen who had fought in foreign armies for the ostensible benefit of their homeland. Beginning with the 1691 exodus of defeated Irish officers known as Wild Geese, Hibernian soldiers had ventured to the European continent to engage in idealistic and self-serving combat against the English in the armies of Catholic monarchs. The Spanish Habsburg throne maintained a Regimento de Hibernia and a Regimento de Ultonia (Ulster) during the eighteenth century. Louis XV of France similarly subsidized an Irish Brigade that rallied from defeat to overrun Anglo-Dutch forces at the seminal 1745 Battle of Fontenoy in modern-day Belgium and was deployed to Savannah in the latter stages of the American Revolution.4 Although not always victorious, members of these brigades were widely admired. Devoted Fenians could take solace in knowing that even if they were to fail, tradition suggested that they would receive the admiration of the Irish populace. Dublin, Cork, and Ballyshannon natives had enthusiastically welcomed the defeated Papal Irish Brigade home from Risorgimento Italy in 1860.5 Early Fenian Brotherhood and overall Irish American support for the Union war effort was at odds with antebellum expatriate political attitudes that had compared the South to a subjugated Ireland. A Southern sympathizer before the war, Meagher echoed the sentiments of many fellow Irish Americans when he enunciated his reasons for raising a company of recruits who joined the New York 69th militia regiment: Looking at every aspect of the question, I do not see what better course I could take. Duty and patriotism alike prompt me to it.The Republic that is the mainstay of human freedom, the world over, that [54.89.70.161] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:56 GMT) The Fighting...