Becoming Citizens Under Fire by Christian Samito

[matthew mckeon]

I went out to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor yesterday to hear Dr. Samito give a talk on his new book.

Fort Warren is a Civil War era fort(it held the two diplomats from the "Trent Affair" for a time, as well as a large number of Confederate P.O.Ws) so it was an appropriate setting. The Commonwealth and the NPS are making a big push to develop the Boston Harbor islands, usually a kind of dumping ground, as recreation settings for picnicking and camping.

I took the ferry from Long Wharf to the fort. My kid was going to come with me, but opted to see her friends in a show instead, part of a new attitude of deep disdain and embarassment at my presence. Her mother still is in the kid's good graces, and assures me it means that, in time, she will enjoy "the good nursing home."

 

[matthew mckeon]

Anyway, Smito's talk was interesting. He said that two groups; African Americans and Irish Americans, fundamentally changed their place in American society through their military efforts.

Enslaved blacks were, of course, emancipated. The question: would they join an inferior post slavery caste system or become full citizens. Free blacks antebellum were in an inferior caste in most places, denied legal and political rights. After the strong role played by black soldiers in the Union Army, attitudes changed, and legislation at the end of the war and postwar granted full political rights to blacks, with the 14th Amendment determining there would be only one class of citizen.

 

[matthew mckeon]

Irish Americans also faced a question of "citizenship" as well. Nativist feeling was strong in the antebellum period, and the Irish, unskilled, poor, and Catholic were viewed by Nativists as a group so unfit and alien that they could not become American.

And what did national citizenship mean? Smito stated that as late as the Civil War, United States citizenship was poorly defined, and indeed could be overruled by other countries by the doctrine of "perpetual allegence" you were always the subject of the nation you were born in and could not naturalize to another country.

Irish American contributions to the Union Army established a clear "national citizenship" of the United States, where naturalized and native born citizens would be treated in an identical manner. It also led quickly to this concept being recognized by other nations, and countries like Great Britain beginning to treat naturalized Americans(often Irish), as Americans, not British subjects.