Fighting Irish in the American Civil War and the Invasion of Mexico: Essays ed. by Arthur H. Mitchell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fighting Irish in the American Civil War and the Invasion of Mexico: Essays ed. by Arthur H. Mitchell Andrew Mach Fighting Irish in the American Civil War and the Invasion of Mexico: Essays. Edited by Arthur H. Mitchell. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4766-6480-4. 272 pp., paper, 35.00. As its seemingly straightforward title suggests, this edited collection of essays focuses on the Irish who fought during the great mid-nineteenth-century wars that convulsed a continent. The "fighting" here takes on a variety of forms, from trading volleys on the front lines to marching in partisan ranks against nativist political candidates, violently defending the economic high ground from perceived competitors, and cutting through bureaucracy to secure postwar service pensions. Essayists employ equally expansive definitions of Irish, meaning that in the end, this volume's subject matter proves far less straightforward than it initially appears. Although the book's title gives equal billing to the Mexican-American and Civil Wars, the road from the Rio Grande to the Halls of Montezuma lasts only two chapters, leaving the remaining sixteen to examine topics tied to the sectional conflict of the 1860s. A few of these latter works offer broad overviews, such as Eileen McMahon's discussion of women's contributions to the war effort in both North and South. The majority, however, tackle more narrowly defined topics. They generally concentrate on specific army units, such as the Sixty-ninth Pennsylvania Regiment; cities, for example, Boston; or individuals, including John Mitchel, who as a wartime newspaper editor in Richmond equally denounced British and Union policies. Sometimes these case studies encompass all three categories. Lawrence McCaffrey's chapter on the Chicago Irish, for instance, narrates the life of James Mulligan, a guiding light behind the creation of the Twenty-third Illinois Infantry. Most of the essays follow McCaffrey's lead in covering relatively familiar historical and historiographical ground. Even so, experts in the field may still find themselves encountering new characters, such as Richard Dowling, the County Galway native whose artillery skills and leadership proved pivotal to the 1863 Confederate defense of Sabine Pass, Texas. Dowling's posting on the Trans-Mississippi periphery resembles Irish Americans' current place in the scholarly literature. In his introduction to the volume, editor Arthur Mitchell critiques "the continuing dismissal of the ethnic story of American history" (4). And despite the recent publication of several well-received monographs, only a few of which make their way into the endnotes of Fighting Irish, Mitchell's point still holds weight in a subfield that often feels set apart. [End Page 187] Yet what, exactly, sets the Irish apart from other Americans? These essays generally adopt what amount to genealogical definitions, treating those born on, or with ancestors from, the Emerald Isle as Irish. The resulting cast of characters includes Catholics and Protestants, Southern slaveholders and Northern laborers, privates and commissioned officers. In short, these essays collectively confirm what other authors have long argued: there was never a single Irish response to the American experience. Synthetic histories thus have not dismissed the ethnic story so much as the competing, often contradictory, ethnic stories of the mid-nineteenth-century United States. While no single event attracts more attention in this volume than the 1863 New York Draft Riots, Marion Truslow's chapter on Irish Brigade soldiers offers the reminder that regardless of how one defines Irish, the vast majority of the city's Irish residents played no part in the upheaval. Although the Irish generally appear here as Democrats, Phillip Pattee's study of Philadelphia similarly shows how local factors led voters there into the Republican camp. Those who search these pages for extended discussions of theory or sweeping attempts to reconceptualize the Irish in America will look in vain. Contributors generally privilege narrative over argument, in line with Arthur Mitchell's suggestion that this book was intended to share "important, or at least insightful" stories with a wider audience (2). Several of these essays could have used additional editorial attention in terms of both content and prose. (For instance, the repeated use of the phrase "War between the States" in the chapter on Richard Dowling...