Why did the Irish fight.

Irish be nature are strong willed , stubborn, patriot,proud, loyal and loving. Not to say other nationality's are not. So any worthy cause that filled the bill was reason enough to get involved. Irish participate, not set back and watch. I'm allowed to comment since I'm first generation American with both Irish born parents who came here legally in the 1920's.

There are an awful lot of Irish drinking songs for some reason. :wink:
 
"The unsanitary conditions were breeding grounds for disease, particularly cholera. Sixty percent of the Irish children born in Boston during this period didn't live to see their sixth birthday. Adult Irish lived on average just six years after stepping off the boat onto American soil."



It's in fact worse than anything I've ever seen with respect to slaves in the South.
Can you provide a study of slave deaths to compare and contrast the difference?
Leftyhunter
 
So the various factions of the Know-Nothings were really just Nativists, who preferred zero immigration but they were for the most part Protestants. I was reading up on some of their ideas, Immigrants should live in America for at least 20 years before they can be considered for citizenship, regular Protestant bible teachings in all schools, a limit on alcohol consumption and for those who were not native, they should not be allowed to vote, I understand that this group was particularly strong during the CW years which still begs the question, why did the Irish fight so fiercely especially when there was such a strong anti-Catholic/Irish sentiment. Perhaps the Irish understood from their experience of dealing with English oppression that violence was the last resort of the desperate, a kind of attitude which says that if people don't offer respect and equality freely then it has to be forcibly made, war does appear to offer good equal opportunity's.
Has I recall tbe Archbishop of New York recruited Irishmen using the argument that fighting for the Union would earn the Catholic Irish equality and respect. One could make the argument he was right.
At the same time the Archbishop of New Orleans was recruiting for the Confederacy.
It has been argued that Irish Catholics enlisted with more enthusiasm for the Confederacy. I have no data on that. I do know Irish immigrants manning the forts defending New Orleans were not enthusiastic about defending the Confederacy. We know certainly some Irish Catholics were enthusiastic about fighting for the Confederacy.
Leftyhunter
 
@Pat Young , I seem to recall literature on Irish immigrants being seized off of arriving ships during the 1860s and essentially impressed into Union Army service. Does this ring a bell or do I need to search?
 
@Pat Young , I seem to recall literature on Irish immigrants being seized off of arriving ships during the 1860s and essentially impressed into Union Army service. Does this ring a bell or do I need to search?
You can search if you like. I wrote about both Irish and Germans who entered into labor contracts in their home countries and were then essentially impressed into the service when they arrived by bounty brokers. The 20th Maine was one of the regiments where this occurred.

Here is an example of Germans to whom this occurred:

https://longislandwins.com/columns/...rmented-and-captured-at-petersburg-in-1864-2/
 
Has I recall tbe Archbishop of New York recruited Irishmen using the argument that fighting for the Union would earn the Catholic Irish equality and respect. One could make the argument he was right.
At the same time the Archbishop of New Orleans was recruiting for the Confederacy.
It has been argued that Irish Catholics enlisted with more enthusiasm for the Confederacy. I have no data on that. I do know Irish immigrants manning the forts defending New Orleans were not enthusiastic about defending the Confederacy. We know certainly some Irish Catholics were enthusiastic about fighting for the Confederacy.
Leftyhunter
Not so long ago I ran a thread where I asked if the CW could be considered a religious war, it ended with an emphatic 'No' but maybe it could in part be considered a religious war for the Irish.
 
It's in the DNA, particularly it seems when we're fighting someone else's war like the ACW or in Europe for generations after the flight of the Wild Geese from Limerick in 1691. They gave centuries of valorous service especially to the French and Spanish and latterly, of course, to the British. The Somme in 1916 and indeed, appropriately in this thread, Waterloo in 1815 spring immediately to mind. Thankfully we seem recently to be leaving this aggressive characteristic behind us in favour of the written word, music, song and dance and laughter. We're good at these things also.
Micky.
 
Been on the bleachers for most of this but just, plain admire and respect the Irish- seems to me in our tapestry, ' America ' theirs is one of the most vibrant patterns. We'd be flatbread without them. And badly needed. We WASPS have a way of graying down landscapes given time and leeway. Goodness knows the Native American influence was rejected, most pretended our African American citizens were not really here and our Germans understandably developed their own communities, mostly.

Someone better than me at this will have to say why but it's always seemed to me the Irish fought- through whichever injustice came their way because it was what they did. Please no one scoff, am pretty convinced on this- just because it may not make sense sociologically doesn't mean you can't observe it. Whether an innate sense of dignity or place in the world- something. Always felt Shaara was onto something when Buster said what he did, " It's the aristocracy I'm after ", and why.

When our Molly Maguires here in Schuylkill County resisted, with deepest conviction and their lives, an aristocracy as pervasive as it was unjust, no, other segment of the population, equally oppressed had been able to muster that voice. It was sneered at all the way to Washington and they had no support- or little. Died rather than shushed.

I don't know. Agree hugely, you just cannot stuff everyone into the same cubbyhole, of course you cannot. The Irish, rich and poor seem to have hit these shores with an energy we hadn't seen and which I'm describing poorly. But possibly contributes to ' why they fought '.
 
Not so long ago I ran a thread where I asked if the CW could be considered a religious war, it ended with an emphatic 'No' but maybe it could in part be considered a religious war for the Irish.
I would say the Civil War was highly divisive for the Irish has they fought for both sides. It's hard to stereotype the Irish has they are all over the map. Remember the account @east tennessee roots had about an Irish immigrant who deserted the Confederate Army, defected to a Unionist regiment in Tennessee and killed Confederate General John Morgan?
Protestant Irish also fought for No the sides and many Unionist guerrillas were Protatesent Irish.
Leftyhunter
 
It has been said that:
The Scots keep the sabbath, and anything else they can lay their hands on.
The Welsh pray on their knees & on their neighbours.
The Irish don’t know what they want, but will fight for it anyway.
The English regard themselves as a self-made nation, which relieves the Almighty of a terrible responsibility !
 
Been on the bleachers for most of this but just, plain admire and respect the Irish- seems to me in our tapestry, ' America ' theirs is one of the most vibrant patterns. We'd be flatbread without them. And badly needed. We WASPS have a way of graying down landscapes given time and leeway. Goodness knows the Native American influence was rejected, most pretended our African American citizens were not really here and our Germans understandably developed their own communities, mostly.

Someone better than me at this will have to say why but it's always seemed to me the Irish fought- through whichever injustice came their way because it was what they did. Please no one scoff, am pretty convinced on this- just because it may not make sense sociologically doesn't mean you can't observe it. Whether an innate sense of dignity or place in the world- something. Always felt Shaara was onto something when Buster said what he did, " It's the aristocracy I'm after ", and why.

When our Molly Maguires here in Schuylkill County resisted, with deepest conviction and their lives, an aristocracy as pervasive as it was unjust, no, other segment of the population, equally oppressed had been able to muster that voice. It was sneered at all the way to Washington and they had no support- or little. Died rather than shushed.

I don't know. Agree hugely, you just cannot stuff everyone into the same cubbyhole, of course you cannot. The Irish, rich and poor seem to have hit these shores with an energy we hadn't seen and which I'm describing poorly. But possibly contributes to ' why they fought '.
I guess if you are born and raised in a place like Ireland where a large percentage of the population experienced extreme injustice and hardship then its going to have a massive social impact, even for those Irish that didn't directly experience oppression and discrimination, they would have known what was happening and its highly likely that they would have known people that were affected. If I think of London during the Blitz, the people were left with two choices, stand in defiance or submit, same for the Irish, Polish, Norwegians and French, in fact any nation or people that have lived under an oppressive regime more often than not come out fighting. So, I agree with you, the Irish would have developed an energy which hadn't been seen before but I think that energy probably came from a deep desire for equality along with a strong sense of survival.
The Irish must have developed a strong survival instinct very early on, they have been through every kind of hardship imaginable, everything from the banning of their language through to Starvation and massacres, that's got to make for some tough people.
 
I wonder if there was any truth in Union recruiters being sent to Ireland to enlist Irishmen, apparently the Confederacy sent agents to Ireland to try and prevent that from happening.
 
I wonder if there was any truth in Union recruiters being sent to Ireland to enlist Irishmen, apparently the Confederacy sent agents to Ireland to try and prevent that from happening.
Yes, there were efforts to recruit in Ireland. And yes, the Confederates sent Fr. John Bannon to Ireland in 1863 to discourage immigration for enlistment.
 
https://www.historyireland.com/18th...-york-draft-riots-of-1863-an-irish-civil-war/

Starting on Monday 13 July 1863 as a protest against the implementation of the Union’s Conscription Act, the demonstrations escalated into a widespread insurrection against federal authority. The Conscription Act answered the desperate need to find men to fight the Civil War. It called for the drafting of 200,000 men but allowed for commutation on payment of $300, a clause that was widely believed to favour the rich. Opposition politicians throughout the North called the act unconstitutional, and planned protests against its implementation.
In the execution of the law, New York was a critical focal point. In 1863 the city had a population of about 800,000—a spectacular rise from the 50,000 inhabitants of 1800. Most of the increase came from immigration, from within the US and from overseas. The majority of the foreign immigrants were Irish, crowding into the slums of the Lower East Side and the working-class areas of the Upper East and West Sides. In 1863 New York extended to just north of present-day Central Park, which was then under construction. Since 1811 the city had adopted the rectangular pattern of streets running east–west and avenues north–south. It was crowded and dense and suffered from serious air pollution, bad sanitation, numerous tenement firetraps, and endemic corruption.
 
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