Irish immigrants – U.S. to 1877

November 18, 2013

Irish Immigrants and Motives for being Confederates

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Charleston, South Carolina was one of the major Irish immigration location. Many of these of these immigrants were young and unskilled laborers and thus had little stake in the slave economy of the South. Yet they sided with the states with which they immigrated to. It seems strange that people who were “just off the boat” would feel an obligation to defend a state that they have only recently come to call home.

It is strange that impoverished immigrants would fell the need to stand up and protect an institution that had nothing to do with them and that a few likely opposed. Actually many Irish immigrants were pro-slavery. The treatment of Irish by the British left a sour taste in the mouth of the Irish and affected their view on social class, since the British believed that Irish were inferior beings. The Irish learned the importance of social inclusion and thus confounds their stance on slavery even more. While some may have supported slavery while others did not, it did not seem like their main motivations for siding with the Confederacy. The Irish wished to rework pro-slavery to meet their ends and views so they could improve their home and increase their social standing, but they also wished to bar slaves from social inclusion showing that they did not consider slaves worthy of social inclusion and thus their support for the South.

Home, a term which relates to the place that we believe that we belong too. These immigrants planned on raising their families in their new home. Thus they would feel that they needed to defend it for the sake of their families future. Since the war would likely bring fighting to the areas in which their families lived and the opposing forces would likely not differentiate who was truly siding with the Confederacy, the Irish feared what could happen to their new homes if they did not assist. Even though the Union forces were going to attack or ransack all who they came across, it was a natural fear of all who lived in the possible war zone.

November 18, 2013

The Mouth of the South

In this week the main topic was Irish immigrants and their involvement in the civil war. It is very questionable to why the Irish chose to join the confederates in their fight for slavery, and the reading throws out numerous reason why this choice made sense although most “were not slave holders but young, impoverished, unskilled workers.” (Joyce 185) The overall reason behind the Irish choice was their knowledge on the need to be included in a group. In their homeland, they were excluded by the English and terribly mistreated as laws prohibited them from “property ownership, jury trial, the vote, and even a Catholic education.” (Joyce 186) Being the lowest of the low before, the Irish knew that they needed to be accepted socially in America in order to not be put in the same position as they were in their homeland. I feel this aligns to what my classmate AlKarout said in her post as she spoke on how the Irish played on slavery to create their identity in the south.

To go along with their mistreatment, the nativists of the north attacked the Irish immigrants; On the contrary, the southern Catholics accepted them. The Nativist attacks brought the thoughts “that social inclusion mattered as much in America as it had in the land they left behind.”(Joyce 193) On the other hand, the churches of the south offered “social services” to the impoverished Irish in times of need like the epidemic of 1852, and these essential moments were essential to gaining the support of these immigrants. (Joyce 190) Without these churches the Irish would have lacked things like hospital care, money for burials, orphanages, and, most important, a sense of belonging to some group.

A final reason pointed out in the reading was the economic competition between the free blacks and the working Irish. They struggled to battle for the same jobs until the Irish pushed to eliminate free black competition from “exclusively white realm of free labour.” (Joyce 188) With these groups battling for jobs, it makes sense that the Irish would support slavery. Without slavery it multiplies the number of people they have to compete with for the few occupations that the impoverished had the chance of getting.

November 18, 2013

The Irish Confederacy

White European immigrants became very prominent when the United States was on the brink of a civil war. The major immigrant groups were the Germans and Irish, most notably the Irish. One thing very ironic that occurred was that the Irish, as seen by the Charleston Irish, chose to fight on the side of the Confederacy. Those on the side of the Confederacy seemed to be polar opposites in their views and lifestyles than the Irish. So then why is it that the Irish find a safe haven in the South or as Joyce puts it a sense of identity?

The Irish were used to social exclusion and isolation as they faced the same situation everywhere they had been due to a number of factors. Therefore, they knew that social inclusion mattered just as much in their new homeland as it did in Ireland (Joyce 186). In a search of social inclusion the Irish found their identity in the South through: fraternal organizations, doctrines of the Southern Catholic Church, and the characters and songs of the theatre (Joyce 185). The South was a very pro-slavery region and the Irish, one could argue, were victims of wage slavery as Roediger brings up in his essay. The Irish originally settled in the North but made their way down South due to an economic crisis in the North and new job opportunities in the South as the Western frontier expanded. From this exodus the white laborer slowly began to take place of the slave. As victims of wage slavery the Irish were looking for a greater sense of freedom and equality and therefore, argued against wage slavery. These arguments against wage slavery typically brought about pro-slavery implications (Roediger 348). This is true, because these laborers feared that by emancipating slaves the free blacks would be competition or superior to the current wageworkers.

As the Irish continued to find their identity in the South as seen by the Charleston Irish laborers, they steadily became more pro-slavery. This was a shift from the anti-slavery abolitionist mindset of the North where they originally settled. Although the Irish were agitated by free and slave labor in the South as it increased competition, they eventually fought for an identity by reworking their pro-slavery ideologies. As they found this sense of identity in the South they were ready to fight alongside the Confederacy.

Logically this makes sense, the South was the first place the Irish truly found a sense of identity and felt at home, and the Charleston Irish exemplify this. Coming from areas where they were socially excluded they fought for an identity and found their social inclusion in the South. Therefore, they felt a sense of loyalty towards the South and were ready to defend their newfound home and the views that came with it.