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9 - Immigrant America and the Civil War

from Part II - Social Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
David T.Gleeson
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

On April 20, 1861, the New York Irish American, dedicated to telling news about and looking after the interests of the growing Irish population in the United States, acknowledged the news coming from South Carolina about the nascent Confederacy’s firing upon Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Founded and operated by Patrick Lynch, who had left Ireland in 1847, the paper was one of the Irish “community’s leading voices” in the antebellum era. Lynch’s editorial noted that this news would “be read with regret by every true patriot.” The paper had hoped for compromise because war would bring delight to “the despotic governments of the Old World” because the government that was “a perpetual reproach to their own narrow and tyrannical systems” was now self-destructing. They would be able to boast that “the grand experiment of man’s capacity for self-government had come to naught.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 173 - 193
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

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Gleeson, David T. The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).Google Scholar
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Keating, Ryan W. Shades of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers and Local Communities in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
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Lonn, Ella. Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940).Google Scholar
Mehrlander, Andrea. The Germans of Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850–1870: A Study and Research Companion (New York: De Gruyter, 2011).Google Scholar
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Samito, Christian G. Becoming American under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship during the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Shiels, Damian. The Forgotten Irish: Irish Emigrant Experiences in America (Dublin: History Press Ireland, 2016).Google Scholar
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Ural, Susannah J. (ed.). Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict (New York: New York University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

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