‘To live and die [for] Dixie’: Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Abstract

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become ‘refugees’ and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often ‘collaborated’ with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism?

Keywords:

• Irish
• immigrants
• Confederacy
• homefront
• nationalism

Notes

 1. Buttimer, ‘By Their Deeds’, 63–6; O'Connell, Catholicity, 515–16; The Rev. C.C. Jones to Mary S. Mallard, 13 December 1860, in Myers, The Children of Pride, 634; Savannah (Georgia) Daily Morning News, 9 July 1861; Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 77–9.

 2. Units such as the Irish Companies of the Sixth Louisiana infantry and the Davis Guards of the First Texas Heavy Artillery, and commanders such as Major General Pat Cleburne, did have impacts on major combat between the Union and Confederate forces. Gannon, Irish Rebels; Barr, ‘Texas Coastal Defenses’; Phillips Joslyn, A Meteor Shining Brightly; Symonds, Stonewall of the West. For the Irish in the Union army see Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle.

 3. See, for example, Sterba, Good Americans; Muller, Free to Die for their Country.

 4. Kennedy, Population of the United States, 621. For good descriptions of growing sectionalism between North and South and the reasons behind it, see Eaton, The Mind of the South; Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor; Fox-Genovese and Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class; Grant, North Over South. The depth of this growing sectionalism has been disputed by the late Edward Pessen and downplayed by W.W. Freehling. For the debate, see Pessen, ‘How Different From Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South?’; Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume 1. For the build-up to secession and the birth of the Confederacy, see Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume 2: Secessionists Triumphant; Thomas, The Confederate Nation; Rable, The Confederate Republic; Bonner, Mastering America, esp. 217–51.

 5. The best examinations of Confederate nationalism are: Thomas, The Confederate Nation and The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience; Rubin, A Shattered Nation.

 6. For sceptics of Confederate nationalism, see Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, and Beringer, The Elements of Confederate Defeat, 23–31, quote on 23; Escott, After Secession; Whites, ‘The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender’, 321; Faust, ‘Altars of Sacrifice’.

 7. Gallagher, The Confederate War; Sheehan-Dean, Why Confederates Fought; Rubin, Shattered Nation, 6.

 8. Gleeson, Irish in the South, 26–7, 35. For the growth of Irish national identity before 1860, see MacDonagh, The Emancipist; O'Connell, Daniel O'Connell; Pickering, ‘Irish First’; Donnelly, ‘Captain Rock’; Larkin, ‘The Devotional Revolution’; Davis, The Young Ireland Movement; Lynch, ‘Defining Irish Nationalism’; Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland.

 9. Regional identity seems to have been stronger in the pre-Famine era, although, even then, American conditions could create a sense of Irish ethnic identity. For an example, see Way, ‘Evil Humors’, 1420–4. From a later period, the best case study of the negotiation of Irish identity with an American one is Meagher, Inventing Irish America.

10. Charleston (South Carolina) Catholic Miscellany, 26 December 1860; Charleston (South Carolina) Daily Courier, 17 September 1861.

11. Heisser, ‘Bishop Lynch's Civil War Pamphlet’.

12. Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 96; Bishop John Quinlan Substitute Book; Niehaus, The Irish in New Orleans, 158–60. Verot also earned the title ‘rebel’ for his vocal opposition to papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870. See Gannon, Rebel Bishop, 31–2, 203–14; Bishop Augustin Verot to [Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick], 18 January 1861, copy, Bishop Verot Collection; , A Tract for the Times and A General Catechism, 20.

13. Daniel, Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee, 121–2; Durkin, Confederate Chaplain; Gleeson, Rebel Sons of Erin, 276–7; Tucker, The Confederacy's Fighting Chaplain, 61–156; John Bannon Diary.

14. Tucker, The Confederacy's Fighting Chaplain, 133, 157–8, 165, 168; Hernon, Celts, Catholics and Copperheads, 23–5; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 359–60.

15. Tucker, The Confederacy's Fighting Chaplain, 171–7, 181; Hernon, Celts, Catholics and Copperheads, 105.

16. Nolan, St. Mary's of Natchez, 139–41; Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 376; Muster Roll, Hospital No. 1, Confederate Army Papers; O'Connell, Catholicity in the Carolina, 268; Buttimer, ‘“By Their Deeds You Shall Know Them”’, 75–6.

17. Savannah (Georgia) Daily Morning News, 20 March 1861.

18. Minutes of the Hibernian Society of Charleston; Charleston (South Carolina) Mercury, 8 May, 23 May 1861; MacMahon, Cause and Contrast; John McFarland to ‘Emma’, 9 October 1860, to Messrs. Rankin and Gilmour, 23 February 1861 to Walter Scott, 3 February 1861, to his mother, 21 August 1861, to [Captain Yazoo Rifles], 22 April 1861, to Captain N. Peake, 27 April, 6 June 1861, Blakemore (Lizzie McFarland) Collection.

19. Quoted in Dillon, The Life of John Mitchel, 2:106. For a succinct view of Genovese's thesis, see his The Slaveholders' Dilemma; Knoxville (Tennessee) Southern Citizen, 4 February 1858.

20. McGovern, John Mitchel, 155–227; Daily Richmond (Virginia) Examiner , 16 October 1863, 16, 19 March 1864; Patrick Condon to P.J. Downing, 31 March 1866, Fenian Brotherhood Records; New Orleans Daily Picayune , 17 March 1876.

21. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi.

22. Buttimer, ‘“By Their Deeds You Shall Know Them”’, 64–6; Charleston (South Carolina) Daily Courier, 16 September 1861; Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 96; ‘Recollections of a Confederate Soldier’.

23. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 205–6; Rubin, A Shattered Nation, 53–64.

24. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Virginia, First Virginia Infantry Regiment; Kenny, The American Irish, 141.

25. Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy, 234–9; Davies, C.S. Armory Richmond, 133.

26. H. Pinckney Walker to Lord (John) Russell, 13 July 1863, 19 July 1864, Foreign Office Records (hereafter FO), 5/907, 5/909; Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 391–5.

27. George Moore to Lord Lyons, 6 June 1863, FO 5/909; Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 395–400; Camden (South Carolina) Confederate, 1 July 1863; Magrath, Three Letters.

28. Daily Richmond (Virginia) Examiner, 24, 28 September, 19, 22 October, 19, 24 November 1863, 26 January, 10 June, 8 July 1864; Kimball, ‘The Bread Riot’, 152–3; Michael B. Chesson, ‘Harlots or Heroines?’, 131–75.

29. Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 390–4, 406–10; Charleston (South Carolina) Tri-Weekly Courier, 15 February, 15 April 1862; Andrews, Footprints of a Regiment, 99.

30. Wetherington, Plain Folk's Fight, 178; Massey, Ersatz in the Confederacy, 161–9.

31. Edwards, Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore, 85–99; Faust, Mothers of Invention. For active opposition, see Bynum, The Free State of Jones, 93–130; Dyer, Secret Yankees.

32. New Orleans Daily True Delta , 12, 22 September 1862. The best work on Union occupation in the Confederacy is Ash, When the Yankees Came. For Butler and New Orleans, see Hearn, When the Devil Came Down to Dixie; Dawson, Army Generals and Reconstruction, 7–8; Trefousse, Ben Butler, 107–34; Nash, Stormy Petrel, 136–77; Nolan, Benjamin Franklin Butler, 150–225.

33. Edward Murphy to W.H. Renaud, 1 June, 16 August 1861, Murphy Family Papers. Confederate troops who were being transported through Raleigh, North Carolina, took it upon themselves to attack the offices of W.W. Holden's ‘peace’ newspaper, The Standard. Clark, Railroads in the Civil War, 110–12; John Hughes to Benjamin Butler, 13 May 1862, Joseph P. Murphy to Benjamin Butler, 12 May 1862, Jeremiah Hurly to Benjamin Butler, 1 August 1862, Benjamin Butler to Henry Halleck, 27 August 1862, Benjamin Butler Papers.

34. Capers, The Biography of a River Town, 148–9, 157–9; Marszalek, Sherman, 191–3; Parks, ‘Memphis under Military Rule’, 50–8; Savannah (Georgia) Daily Herald, 18 March 1865.

35. Irish civilians in the North, for example, could also undermine the patriotic efforts of Irish soldiers at the front. See Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots; Spann, ‘Union Green’, 193–209.