Shades of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers, and Local Communities in the Civil War Era

Abstract

Shades of Green “seeks to uncover the lives and experiences of men and women who have been all but lost to the larger narrative of the Civil War” (p. 17). Ryan W. Keating, an assistant professor at California State University, San Bernardino, believes that the “sacrifice of the men who made up the ranks nevertheless provides important insight into the array of experiences those Irish soldiers and their communities faced during the war and broadens our understanding of the roles, ideologies, and experiences of ethnic soldiers in America's greatest conflict” (ibid.). Drawing from an impressive array of letters, diaries, memoirs, newspapers, official reports, census data, passenger lists, compiled military service records, courts martial files, pension applications, and other primary sources, Keating examines the officers and enlisted men in three Union infantry regiments: the Twenty-Third Illinois, the Ninth Connecticut, and the Seventeenth Wisconsin. Keating's book expands our knowledge of Irish regiments that are less well-known than the Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac. Utilizing a database of over five thousand men, Keating notes that the companies that formed the three regiments reflected their local communities. While largely composed of Irish immigrants (or their sons), the Twenty-Third Illinois and the Seventeenth Wisconsin, in particular, also attracted native-born Americans and other immigrants, including Germans. Enlistment patterns in 1861 and mounting casualties and discharges complicated the Irish identities of the units.