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Irish immigrants were poor and used to subjugation by class status when they immigrated to the United States. The ones who ended up in the south and, specifically in this case, in Charleston seemed to rally around the battle-cry of the confederacy for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery or slave owners. This article by Joyce clearly states that these poor Irish could not own slaves, but they were above influence of powerful slave owners or other social powers which some have suggested pushed the Irish into confederate battalions. They were not socially inept or pushed around; they had institutions such as the theater, the church, social clubs (Hibernian), as well as nationalist newspapers as social outlets. They regularly critiqued the wealthy upper class of Charleston through these outlets and strengthened their nationalist identity as well as their connection to their new found home.
Instead, they became “dutiful sons” of their new country willingly and united, Joyce claims. But the question still remains why, as the elite classes bullying them into joining was shown to be invalid. It seems as if the Irish-American Immigrants were fighting for the south to secure autonomy, assert their place in society and their right to be contributing members of the southern way of life. This is a narrative that is told in many ways in many times, where a subjugated group of people rise up to fight a war in order to justify their place in society. Of course this happens with African Americans in American History as well, both in the civil war and onwards. This idea can even be extended to slavery at the time, as Ela pointed out in her last blog that we can see slave resistance through Lizzie Mae as a form of assertion to their humanity and independence.
The poor Irish-American Immigrants joining the confederacy is an extremely crucial point for civil war history. Slave owners could not have fought the war or even fielded an army. The persons who plantation owners and mass slave traders could not have realistically fought union powers. This I think may foreshadow a growing narrative of poorer, subjugated and socially devalued men joining the ranks of the confederacy not necessarily to make money off of slavery but to assert their ability to belong, their strength and their independence to the elite of the time, something which seems to be an unfortunate motif in wartime history.