Confederate Irishmen...........

[alexjack]

Did any of them ever record their thinking, reasons, for fighting for the Confederacy? I would have thought the Union Cause would have been more suited to their traits.

 

[virginiaworm]

Maybe you ought to share with us what you think "their traits" are ....

 

[alexjack]

Maybe you ought to share with us what you think "their traits" are ....

Hope I haven't used the wrong word here. I simply meant that I imagine Irishmen with their strong feeling for Republicanism and anti ruling class leanings would have been more likely to side with the Union than the 'aristocratic' run South.

 

[Pat Young]

John Mitchell was a Protestant who had been a leading Irish republican in 1848. He moved to the South before the Civil War and wrote extensively in support of the Confederacy. He did not fight in the war himself. Mitchell had originally lived in NY when he immigrated, but after 1857 he lived in areas with slavery until the Confederate defeat.

He openly supported slavery, as well as the torture of slaves. He viewed slavery as a positive good and saw it as a corrective for the excesses of capitalism. Mitchell wrote "We deny that it is a crime, or a wrong, or even a peccadillo to hold slaves, to buy slaves, to keep slaves to their work by flogging or other needful correction. We wish we had a good plantation well-stocked with healthy negroes in Alabama." While he was a **** and a supporter of slavery, he claimed that the Union war aim was not to abolish slavery but to establish colonial domination of Northern capital over the Southern economy.

During the war he edited the Richmond Enquirer.

 

[Pat Young]

Mitchell's three sons enlisted in the Confederate army.

Private William Mitchel was killed at Gettysburg. John C. Mitchel was killed in the CSA defense of Ft. Sumter.

 

[Pat Young]

When John C. Mitchell was dying after his mortal wound at Sumter he reportedly said
"I willingly give my life for South Carolina. Oh! that I could have died for Ireland!"

 

[alexjack]

Thanks for your replies Pat Young. Mr Mitchell seems something of an enigma. A Protestant who had been a leading Republican in Ireland but who supported slavery and the Confederacy when he moved to the US.

 

[Pat Young]

Thanks for your replies Pat Young. Mr Mitchell seems something of an enigma. A Protestant who had been a leading Republican in Ireland but who supported slavery and the Confederacy when he moved to the US.

I am doing more research on him and I will write more about him later. He was embraced by some Fenians in New York after the war, but treated with mistrust by many other Irish.

 

[alexjack]

I am doing more research on him and I will write more about him later. He was embraced by some Fenians in New York after the war, but treated with mistrust by many other Irish.

I will look forward to learning more about him.

 

[Pat Young]

I will look forward to learning more about him.

Sounds good.