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The Irish in New York in the early eighteen-sixties
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
Extract
July 1863 was the turning point of the American civil Avar. Prospects of ultimate victory for the north improved greatly that month, when General Lee's thrust into Pennsylvania was repulsed at the battle of Gettysburg, and Vicksburg, last confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, fell after a long siege. Yet during the sultry week of 12 July 1863 the most violent race riots of American history took place in the streets of New York, touched off by enforcement of a conscription act which congress had passed four months earlier How many negroes were lynched by white rioters and their bodies borne away on the waters surrounding Manhattan Island can never be known. But between twelve and fifteen hundred white persons died in this civil war within a civil war, most of them slain by police and soldiers charged with quelling the upheaval.
If newspaper accounts, official reports, and other sources of information agree upon any point about the draft disorders, it is that almost all the participants were Irish. ‘The immediate actors in the late riots in this city, got up to resist the draft and to create a diversion in favor of the southern rebellion, were almost exclusively Irishmen and catholics’ , wrote Orestes A. Brownson, America's leading convert to the Catholic Church.
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References
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64 The Tribune also published the anti-slavery appeal which O'Connell addressed to catholics in America in 1843 : ‘ Every catholic knows how distinctively slave-holding, and especially slave-dealing, is condemned by the catholic church Nothing can be more distinct or more powerful than the pope's denunciation of that most abominable crime Once again, and for the last time, we call upon you to come out of the councils of the slave-owners—at all events, to free yourself from the participation in their guilt.’ Tribune, 31 Oct. 1862.
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74 Two other Irish-American leaders whose opinions on slavery it publicized were George Francis Train and Judge Charles P Daly. Ibid., 19 July, 11 Oct., 8 Nov. 1862.
75 Ibid., 28 Sept. 1861; 15 Mar., 17 May 1862; 10 Jan. 1863.
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77 See, for instance, the speech of John Cochrane, Democratic candidate for representative from the sixth congressional district. Herald, 9, 16 Oct. 1860.
78 Ibid., 22, 24 Oct. i860.
79 Greeley was the militantly anti-slavery editor of the Tribune.
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81 Irish American, 21 Jan. 1860; other comments to the same effect in ibid., 28 Jan., 4, 11 Feb. 1860. McNeill, op. cit., pp. 122–3.
82 Irish American, 30 June, 17 Nov. 1860; 26 Jan. 1861.
83 Ibid., 1 Dec. 1860. Note also ibid., 17 Nov. 1860.
84 Ibid., 22 Dec. 1860.
85 Ibid., 22, 29 Dec. 1860; 5, 19 Jan. 1861
86 Ibid., 16 Feb., 9 Mar. 1861.
87 Ibid., 30 Mar. 1861 See the account of St Patrick's Day celebrations in 1862, in ibid., 29 Mar. 1862.
88 Ibid., 20 Apr 1861
89 Herald. 21 Apr 1861 Irish American, 27 Apr. 1861
90 Herald. 7 Mar 1863. Tribune, 7 Mar 1863.
91 Herald, 19 June 1863.
92 Ibid., 21 Apr, 1861 Irish American, 27 Apr. 1861. O'Gorman later cooled in his attitude towards the war.
93 Herald, 30 Aug., 7 Oct. 1861; 19 June 1863. Tribune, 7 Aug. 1862. Irish American, 7, 21 Sept., 17 Oct. 1861
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98 Many articles and editorials on this subject in the following news papers are identical in argument and phraseology: Herald, 24–31 Aug., 4–5, 8–9, 11–14, 18–19, 22–3, 25–6, 28–30 Sept., 1, 7–10, 12–13, 15, 17–18, 22–5, 28–9, 31 Oct., 1–5, 7, 10, 13–19, 21–3, 26–7, 30 Nov., 2 Dec. 1861; 8, 19–20, 22 Oct., 3–5 Nov. 1862; 22 Feb., 1 Mar., 3, 6, 11, 15–16, 18 Apr., 1, 6–7 May 1863. Irish American, 25 May, 1, 15, 22, 29 June, 6 July, 24 Aug. 1861; 4, II Jan. 1862. Shannon, The organization and administration of the union army, i. 20.
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100 Ibid., 1 June 1862.
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102 Irish American, 11 May, 24 Aug. 1861 ; 10 May, 9 Aug., 27 Sept., 8, 15 Nov., 6 Dec. 1862; 7, 14, 28 Mar. 1863. Herald, 18 Sept., 24 Nov. 1861. Before the outbreak of the war, many bodies of militia had been formed by Irish Americans in New York, partly for this purpose. Irish American, 20 Oct., 3, 17 Nov. 1860; 19 Jan., 23 Mar. 1861.
103 Ibid., 25 May 1861.
104 Ibid., 18 Jan. 1862.
105 Ibid., 22 Feb. 1862.
106 Ibid., 29 Nov. 1862.
107 Ibid., 16 Aug. 1862. The prelate's Dublin speech was largely a plea for non-intervention by European powers in the American civil war In the course of it, however, he referred to Irish soldiers in the union armies, saying, ‘ The Irish have, in many instances, as I have the strongest reasons for knowing, entered into this war partly to make themselves apprentices, students as it were, finishing their education in this the first opportunity afforded them of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the implements of war (cheers).’
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113 Ibid., 13 Apr. 1861.
114 Ibid., 6 Apr. 1861.
115 Ibid., 23 Feb. 1861.
116 Ibid., 9, 16 Feb., 20 Apr. 1861. This warning was contained in letters to people in Ireland written by the Rev. D. W Cahill, an Irish priest touring America, and published by the press in Ireland and the Irish American in New York.
117 Ibid., 25 May, 29 June, 13, 20 July, 21 Aug. 1861.
118 Ibid., 27 Apr., 24 Aug. 1861.
119 Ibid., 3, 10 Aug. 1861.
120 Herald, 24 Aug. 1861.
121 Archbishop Hughes later expressed the belief that to some extent the closing of factories in New York was a concerted action taken by employers to compel Irish catholic workers to enlist and thus to relieve the city of the presence of many foreigners. Ibid., 14 July 1863. Irish American, 25 July 1863. Metropolitan Record, 25 July 1863. But at a meeting of native-born mechanics in February 1863 it was complained that their employers had persuaded them to enlist and then filled their places with cheap foreign and negro labour. Weekly Caucasian, 14 Feb. 1863.
122 Herald, 19 Apr. 1861. Irish American, 4 May 1861.
123 Ibid., 27 Apr. .1861. Lee, Discontent in New York, p. 34.
124 Herald, 31 Oct. 1861; 22 May 1863. The war department's treatment of the Irish Brigade later greatly diminished Irish ardour for the war. Irish American, 14 Mar., 18 Apr., 23 May 1863. See Fish, C. R.. The American civil war: an interpretation (Longmans, 1937), p. 281 Google Scholar : ‘ Meagher's Irish brigade from New York was so slaughtered that many Irish believed it purposely sacrificed and were hardened into hostility to the war ’.
125 Ibid., 31 Aug. 1861. Lee, op. cit., pp. 62–5, 82–6. For other hardships of soldiers increasing their war-weariness, see ibid., pp. 41–62, 65–82.
126 An example of the adverse effect of this circumstance upon army morale is given in the Herald, 19 Nov. 1861