THE NEW YORK IRISH BRIGADE RECRUITS AND THEIR

FAMILIES IN THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR

 

Peasants, Patriots, Irish-Americans: Pension and Family

 

I have no trade--never had any--always been a laboring man. In the last eight or nine years I have put in coal or planted sod, or worked in gardens and did such other little jobs of work that I could get. I have had no steady work for he last ten years. During this time I have sometimes received one dollar a day, at other times perhaps not more than twenty-five cents. Never kept any account of my earnings, but can safely say that my earnings for the last eight or ten years have not averaged more than $2.50 or three dollars a week. When my son entered the army, I lived on 35th St. between 1st and 2nd Ave.--don't know the number. McMahon was the name of the landlord. Lived there about six or seven years. I paid at first four dollars a month rent and when I left there about 1868 paid him eight and a half ($8.50) dollars rent per month. My wife never earned fifty dollars altogether while she was in this country. As long as I was able to work I would not ask her aid.

Signed,

 

X [Patrick Finn]

from The Pension File of Michael Finn, 1877, National Archives, Washington

“For generations,” wrote the late great historian Dennis Clark, New York above all American localities was America for the Irish.”1  The Irish connection with New York suggests several lines of inquiry for this account of the New York Irish in the  Civil War era.  What census results for mid-century inform the narrative of the size, location, and other pertinent facts about the Irish population of New York on the eve of the Civil War?  What was the city like then economically?   Did certain existing institutions help or hurt these new arrivals?  The evidence suggests that while indeed the Irish population in New York City from which many Union Army recruits would be drawn was poor, and the city harsh, dirty, dangerous, and alien to them, the traditions of the Irish sustained them while over time they were attached to the city, the state, and the nation through the workplace, Tammany Hall, and the Roman Catholic Church; the War Department’s Bureau of Pensions finished the final fastening.  High Irish Brigade casualties sustained by these brave warriors created a sense of entitlement to be Americans, regardless of what the nativists said.  Receipt of the Civil War Pension meant that these Irish people had “no vicious habits” and were morally fit; the long assimilation process was completed by the Pension Bureau as its red tape cemented the soldiers and their families to the social structure.  The Irish had become Americans by the end of the Civil War era.2

Census data in New York (including Brooklyn) for the period just before the Civil War put the total population at about one million people of which “on Manhattan Island alone, nearly 384,000 (or 48%) of the 805,000 inhabitants were born outside the United States;” Robert Ernst notes that over 200,000 were natives of Ireland. Of the twenty two wards in Manhattan ranging from the first ward at the tip of the island to the 22nd at 59th Street near Central Park, the Irish had, by 1855, reached 20% or more of the total population in seventeen of the twenty-two wards (excluding wards 9, 10, 11, and 13).  The Irish also led all other groups in admission to Bellevue Hospital, to the Lunatic Asylum, the Alms House for Pauperism, and the City Prison.  No doubt the overall health of the famine Irish immigrants was deplorable owing to poor nutrition and starvation stemming from the potato blight in Ireland (1845-48) where at least one million Irish died; from the British failure to promptly feed those in their colonial care; and from the four-to-six weeks’ travel between Ireland and New York, which obviously further debilitated these impoverished people.3

What was the city of New York like economically that these rural famine Irish immigrants would settle in?   On the eve of the Civil War “about 62% of the nation’s commerce passed through the port of New York; in 1800 the figure had been 9%.”  Many Federal forts with large garrisons of troops were located in New York, so war stimulated the manufacturing of ships, clothing, and pharmaceuticals (these industries employed many Irish workers).   Additionally, the loss of the Southern cotton trade was made up for by the inflow of  agricultural goods from the Midwest via the Erie Canal, dug almost entirely by approximately 35,000  Irish. Other exports to Europe in 1862 exceeded over “6,880,000 gallons of oil, three times the volume from Philadelphia.”  During the Civil War, the “annual tonnage carried on the Erie and the Central lines increased by about 75%.”  Transportation in general was very viable according to Miller’s New York as it is for 1865 with listings of 29 omnibus lines “comprising 671 vehicles, which average about 10 down and as many up trips daily.  Besides these stages there are five lines drawn by horses or mules along rails laid on the streets.  The fare is only 5 cents.”4

Where did the newly arrived urban Irish peasants from the famine fit in work wise with this thriving metropolis?   Terrance Winch, winner of the American poetry prize for 1986, wrote “When New York Was Irish,” which noted the Irish relationship to work in New York.  “We dug all the subways, we ran the saloons/We built all the bridges, we played all the tunes,/We put out the fires, we controlled city hall,/We started with nothing, wound up with it  all.” The work world and Irish identity were connected. Out of the pool of unskilled New York City laborers totaling 23,300 workers, 21,800 were either porters or laborers; the majority of laborers were Irish--87% of all foreign-born Manhattan laborers in 1855 were Irish, and one-fifth of the employed Irish who lived on Manhattan were laborers.  Aside from heavy laborer jobs, transportation work as teamsters and carters included in 1855 out of about 3,000 foreign workers, 80% Irish born.  The 1855 New York State census also shows that Irish-born Manhattan-dwelling workers totaled (out of the immigrant hostlers) 84%; and, 71% of New York harbor's boatmen.  Of the skilled worker force, in the building trades half were born outside the U.S., and over half of these were Irish born.  Out of foreign-born workers, Irish by percentage of occupations included 75% masons, plasterers, bricklayers; 50% of the carpenters, 33% of the painters and glazers; 33% of the shoemakers.5  Irish Brigade occupational data gleaned from National Archives Pension File data breaks down slightly differently, with more unskilled than skilled represented.  Out of the almost 300 Irish Brigade soldiers (from the 63rd, 88th, and 69th regiments of New York Infantry) surveyed who applied for a Civil War Pension, pre-war occupations shown in the pension files6 include mostly unskilled workers (one hundred and forty-three out of 262 were unskilled or 53%).  Of the remaining 119 skilled workers, the building trades accounted for the most occupations with a total of 24, and other skilled workers totaling 46%.  Of the very few known occupations of their wives, most were domestics (as Hasia Diner demonstrated in Erin’s Daughters)7 and listed occupations in pension files as housekeeper, washer and ironer, laundress and washer woman, servant, cleaning woman, house worker; a few actually labeled themselves as domestic.  Out of 262 wives, then, we know that 38 of them had identified themselves in pension files; only a few of these appeared to be skilled including 1 overall maker, 1 seamstress, 1 milliner.  That the occupations of the remaining 224 are unknown is perplexing.

What of the standard of living of the Irish immigrants?8  The Times, as reported in 1853, estimated that working men (skilled that is) in New York City spent $600 a year; $550 went to food, clothing, rent, and household expenses; $15 was for other essential items. I estimated that unskilled workers earned $1.00 per day, and that they could count on 180 days of work per year.   $240.00 was needed for a family of four with yearly rent costing $60; clothing, $60; food, $120.  The wage increase of common laborers "from the decade following 1850 to the close of the century was approximately 50 percent."9  In the depression of the mid-1850's, wages did not keep up with expenses. Workers' income was sustained by means of military pay such as bounties. Indeed, even after the war started and for the first two years of it, all of the wages witnessed an average increase of about 25% or less than half the increase of prices.   An “unprecedented surge of growth, construction, and reorganization” in Manhattan at this time meant that “Manhattan property values appreciated more than fourfold…construction rates doubled, reaching two thousand new buildings per year in the frenzied markets.”10  However difficult it was to survive in New York with the rise in tenement rents at mid-century, opportunities did exist here where there were few if any in Ireland.

                

Along with the benefits of being employed in urbanizing New York, the Roman Catholic Church there added continuity, school, and cultural cohesion sustaining these urban peasants in the acculturation process.11  Remarked Archbishop Hughes, the founder of Fordham, St. John’s and Manhattan College: "If ... he can be present at the holy sacrifice of Mass, (and) see the minister of his religion at the altar and hear the word of God and the language to which his ear was accustomed from childhood, he forgets he is among strangers in a strange country."12  Through church attendance of his fellow countrymen, he tried to domesticate the Irish.  Parish churches in New York City (Ireland had no parish churches) doubled from the 15 there in 1845 to over 30 in 1860.  A "devotional revolution" turned the moribund Catholic Church of pre-Famine Ireland around into a church with a new vitality manifesting itself in "new buildings, increased devotions, and more responsible pastors."13   The Irish saw religion "as the most important of all topics"14 whether they practiced it or not.  Religious ritual in parish churches, therefore, bonded the Irish to the neighborhood and served as an agent of assimilation15 by turning nominal Catholics into practicing believers with frequent masses on Sundays. The Church of the Transfiguration, home of many Irish Brigade families, had a thirty-minute long service at 7:00, another at 8:00, a grand solemn mass at 10:30 with a choir and organist, and vespers in the evening.  At mid-century the bishops had “legislated that the ceremonies of baptism, marriage, confession, and death must take place in the church.”16  Such ceremony must have been so welcomed that the squalor of daily living environments for many Irish could be forgotten for a time. 

        Of the 262 marriages of our (pension file) soldiers to their wives, 51 were married in Ireland; 109 were married in various Catholic Churches in New York City and environs including St. Stephens (10), Church of the Nativity (8), Old and New St. Patrick’s (5), St. Joseph’s (9), Church of the Transfiguration (6), St. Francis Xavier (9). One hundred and two were married in churches with uncertain geographic locations, or were outside the area of New York City.  The locations of the churches correspond closely with the Irish wards of New York City. Out of the total sample of 262, there were about four Protestants, an insignificant figure considering the total number of families. Virtually every soldier's pension file had both a marriage certificate and a baptismal certificate. In a sworn deposition of January 8, 1864, the Catholic priest of St. Stephens Church in New York City, J. W. Cummings, stated

 

That as such Pastor he has charge of the baptismal records of such church that by such records it appears that on the 13th day of June 1852 Matthew Sands the son of Mary and Michael Sands was baptized according to the rites and forms of the Catholic church, and that the sponsors of said child were Sarah and Michael Sands.

 

And their marriage was documented too:

 

To all whome [sic] it may concern.

 

I hereby certify that Michael Sands was lawfully married to Mary Harper in the presence of John Byrne and Catherine O'Hare as appears from the marriage registry of the Roman Catholic Parish Church of Donaghmore, Ireland, on the day of May 1845.

 

That the church kept both marriage and baptismal certificates underscores its important role as record keeper; the church was a partner with the state, and as such was attaching the Irish to the state. The success of the Catholic Church institution for bonding the Irish immigrants together in their new urban environment was not as obvious at first in non-parochial schools.    

With Bishop Hughes as leader of the Irish immigrants, the city became the center of the parish school movement.17  Parochial school students numbered 16,000 by the end of the Civil War.  Earlier, in 1856, the Church of the Transfiguration built a schoolhouse that was run by the Sisters of Charity while the next year the Christian Brothers took charge of the boys with an initial involvement of 500 boys and with some tuition charge.  By 1862 this institution was a free school with an enrollment of 1,200.  In these schools the children were taught Catholicism from various catechisms.  Parents had used Butler's catechism in Ireland, and their American-born children learned the faith from the same book.18 

Reinforcing the institutional solidarity of Catholicism in the immigrant church of New York was the School Reader first published in the U.S. in 1837 with the purpose of presenting "the facts of religion as the best refutation of its adversaries"19 rather than attacking other religions.  Praising Irish culture, it painted a portrait of the Irish peasant and included the adjectives "shrewd," "hospitable," "heroic," "just," and "cheerful" and also instilled pride in America thus fostering a sense of patriotism. Speeches by Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, and George Washington were included in the Christian Brothers' Reader.  Daniel Webster outlined the duties of the American citizen. “History texts also reinforced this sense of national pride, and Catholic songbooks did not fail to include patriotic hymns in their repertoire.”20   At Transfiguration Parish where many Irish recruits had married their wives and baptized their children, parents were allowed to see their children perform in annual exhibitions in which Irish poetry was recited and "Yankee Doodle" sung.  Still, Man could not and should not alter the static social system of the stratified society, however many hardships it brought.21             

While the official position of the church was against any form of government intervention to help the Irish immigrant in need, the church did offer charitable parish organizations (the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Vincent’s Hospital, various protection agencies for children) that sought to help the poor in many ways.22  Finally, when war came, the American flag flew from Catholic Churches in New York, and Archbishop Hughes said:  "’Be patriotic, do for the country what the country needs, and the blessing of God will recompense those who discharge their duty.’"23            

For understanding the Irish, politics and patriotism it is important to note (according to Dale Knoble) that unlike Europeans, Americans were made a nation by means of republican polity, laws, shared rights and the benefits citizens derived from them. No real nation existed before the state. "National identity was not a natural fact but an ideological structure."24 Citizenship “was the basis for inclusion in the nation. Loyalty to nation meant loyalty to the Constitution.” This conception of nationality made citizenship "contractual, volitional, and legal rather than natural and immutable."25  Against this backdrop of citizenship one can view the political attitudes of the New York Irish prior to the Civil War.

The Irish contributions to American life were many, and included participation in and shaping of process politics of the Democratic Party, especially Tammany Hall.26   With all of its corruption, Tammany Hall, the prototype of big city political machines, failed New York City but helped the Irish immigrant, who, in turn, shaped city and national politics. Irish immigrant peasants became patriots in part by means of participation in pre-Civil War Democratic Party politics in New York City. Comprising 34% of the voters in New York City in 1855,27 the Irish vote was important to get.  Those in need of help in a variety of circumstances could often receive direct, immediate, and effective help from the only system available; recent Irish Catholic immigrants were naturally its chief beneficiaries and they eventually took over the machine and ran it. The police and the fire companies worked for the machine.  Indeed, according to the 1855 State of New York Census, 25% of the police force were Irish, and they supported Tammany Hall. Until the New York State Legislature inaugurated the Metropolitan Fire Department in June of 1865, fire companies like the Black Joke Engine Company No. 33 groomed future Tammany politicians including Boss Tweed. He organized  the Big Six Engine Company in 1849 and was later its foreman. He controlled Tammany Hall. Success as a volunteer fireman frequently led to the acquisition of status in the Irish community. Often in their history, the Irish Catholic peasants had been the tools of their landlords. That they would become tools of political bosses in America seemed inevitable given their prior experience as British colonial subjects. Once here, political bosses marched them in groups to the polls, and cemented the allegiance with free liquor.28  For many Irish,  political activity centered in the saloon.

Immigrant saloon owners like John McSorley of 15 E. 7th Street in Manhattan were in key positions socially and politically. Indeed, his relative, William McSorley, owned a publishing house on Barclay Street in lower Manhattan which published the first history of the Irish Brigade in 1867 by one of its officers named Captain David P. Conyngham, and entitled The Irish Brigade and its Campaigns, with Some Account of the Corcoran Legion, and Sketches of the Principal Officers. Such a figure as McSorley could be a cog in the Tammany machine. Brian Harrison's work on the importance of pubs in social change in Victorian England can be superimposed on New York immigrant saloons, with similar conclusions.  McSorley's provided, like its Victorian counterpart, an oasis from the nagging wife, crying children, boredom and pain of day laborer work. Social classes mixed in the saloon that was the center for male recreation as well as a public meeting place for working people.  Democratic votes were produced.29  Voting Democratic for the Irish meant opposing nativists and abolitionists in domestic policy (Meagher and Mitchel were strident racists) and  Great Britain in foreign policy. The Irish became "more clannish, nationalistic, and loyal to the Democratic Party.  Nativist attacks retarded assimilation and welded the Irish into a solid unified group."30  This bonding process was very important. After the 1840's Paddy's character 31 was seen as unchangeable in America with traits racial in origin and fixed; education in Republicanism could not change them. In the later Ante-bellum period, Americans used pseudo-sciences to define "blood" as the criterion for nationality. Now Paddy became "dirty," "ragged," "unkempt." Irish physical appearance reflected lack of Irish character, and the Draft Riots of 1863 suggested to some that the nativists had been right all along.  

How exactly did the riots start?    Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a draft in the summer of 1863, and notified all aliens who had declared their intention to become citizens that they had sixty-five days grace to leave the country if they did not wish to come under its provisions. The Irish American and the Freeman's Journal of May 16th were both incensed.   The New York Tribune (Greeley's republican paper) covered the speech of Governor Seymour on July 4th at the Academy of Music in its July 6th edition. Seymour saw the draft as unconstitutional and therefore a violation of "our rights" and pleaded with the Republicans to have it rescinded. Or else: "that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."    A few days later, at about 10:30 a.m. on Monday, July 13, 1863, a large crowd had gathered at 677 Third Avenue at 46th Street for the reading of names drawn from a barrel to serve in the Union Army. Hundreds of names were drawn on July 11th at another location in the city without incident. Suddenly, members of the Black Joke Volunteer Fire Company charged the building and broke inside, overpowering soldiers and police on duty. Thus began one of the worst episodes of civil disorder in United States history. Six thousand soldiers brought in from Gettysburg and Washington on Thursday and the 2,200 police already on hand dispersed many rioters with shot. On Friday, July 17, 1863,32 after a plea from Archbishop Hughes, the mobs ceased illegal behavior.  Perhaps the major factor in stopping the rioting permanently had occurred earlier on Wednesday when the City Council had passed an ordinance appropriating $2.5 million to pay the fee of $300 for any poor New Yorker who was drafted and who could not find the money himself. If the drafted man did agree to serve, the money would be paid to him as a bounty.

The facts need to be stated at the outset because of great discrepancies in data. The riots cost New York County $1,516,423.99. Over 50 buildings were burned, between 105 and 120 people died, and 128 were seriously wounded in the riot, both rioters and victims. Thirty-five soldiers and 32 policemen were seriously wounded. Three hundred and fifty-two people can be identified as rioters, with only the names available for 92 of them. Two hundred and forty-one were male and 19 were female.  People at the bottom of society thus dominated this Irish mob of the Industrial Age—a fair cross section of New York’s younger male working class with no prior arrests. Out of 184 whose country of birth can be determined, 117 were born in Ireland, forty in the United States.  The Irish Catholics on the Metropolitan Police and in the various military units performed well, and eighty-one out of the 443 rioters they arrested went to trial.  Sixty-seven out of 81 rioters were convicted, but the stiffest sentence a convicted rioter received was six months in the City Penitentiary.  Only one of those who attacked Negroes in the riot got a heavy prison sentence of 10 years in the State Prison.  Why so few were punished is the result of a combination of factors: lack of evidence, poor work by prosecutors, and judges giving the lightest possible sentence in many cases.

 

Modern contemporary scholarship has demonstrated that the slogan "Rich man's war but poor man's fight" was untrue. "Unskilled workers and Irish-Americans were proportionately underrepresented in the Union Army" according to James McPherson. "Draft insurance societies and appropriations by city councils or political machines to pay the commutation fee of any drafted man who did not want to go enabled poor men to buy their way out of the draft almost as readily as rich men."33 As a patriotic gesture, 66%34 reenlistment in the face of such heavy casualties speaks very well of the New York Regiments of the Irish Brigade. Although a stimulus to patriotism was not needed for the Irish Brigade, no doubt the men felt justified in accepting the various bounties that were offered. Therefore, monetary incentives were obviously a secondary reason for reenlistment by Irish Brigade soldiers, but probably a primary consideration for others. For example, the New York Times carried the following advertisement on January 7, 1864:

NEW YORK COUNTY VOLUNTEER COMMITTEE

30,000 VOLUNTEERS WANTED

The following are the pecuniary inducements offered:                    

County Bounty, cash down                                                             $300

State Bounty                                                                                    $75

United States Bounty to new recruits                                              $302

United States Bounty additional to veteran soldiers                          $100-477

TOTAL                                                                                         $777

 

Applications to be made personally at the office of the committee.

Signed

George Opdyke, Mayor

 

William M. Tweed,

Supervisor, County Committee

How did the Irish Brigade recruits and their families respond to the bounties? In a letter from the pension file of Private John Gorman, 63rd Regiment of New York Infantry dated January 11, 1862, in the National Archives, we have a clue. In this letter to the dead soldier's wife, Lieutenant Laurence Daidy wrote from Brigade headquarters near Falmouth, Virginia that Mary Gorman should "sell" the bounty. This letter shows not only the cohesiveness of the unit and concern of the officer for the family of Gorman, but it also is evidence for a "modern" outlook, a capitalist outlook. The Irish were being attached to the state; they were dealing with red tape. To paraphrase Lieutenant Daidy's letter to Mary Gorman, aware of the many economic hardships that some New York Irish endured, the Lieutenant had already notified E. B. French in the Department of the Treasury that the late Private Gorman "was paid up to the 30th of June ... the government owes you about $57 dollars and some cents besides $100 dollars bounty." Then Daidy suggested that Mrs. Gorman "sell this claim at a little discount" because Washington's inefficient bureaucracy would take months to pay her. In a final effort to console the widow, Daidy remarked: "He [Private Gorman] was well cared for [and] was buried with


a coffin and I have not known another private having been buried [sic] in one from our regiment but him."35

"Pecuniary considerations" obviously had helped promote reenlistments. "The soldiers," reported the New York Times, "were justified in expecting liberal bounties, and it was the duty of the government to offer them." Early bounties were not seen as unpatriotic.  Various levels of government raised these monies to support the soldier's family while he served his country. But the later conscription-substitute-bounty system produced three-quarters of a million new men who did little to help win the war. This task fell mainly on the pre-bounty veterans of 1861 and 1862--who looked with contempt on the 1864 substitutes and bounty men.36

What about the patriotism of the Irish Brigade recruits as measured by Pension File data? Approximately 260 Union Army privates have been analyzed, and lists compiled regarding enlistment history, battles fought in, and occupations. When did our soldiers enlist? Were most in the pre-heavy bounty /substitute/ commutation business period from 1861-1863? Out of 250 privates for whom we have dates of enlistment, 177 enlisted in the 1861-62 period, or 71%. One soldier enlisted in 1863. Fifty-seven out of 250 soldiers for whom we have dates of enlistment, enrolled in the 1864-65 period (23%). Such a high percentage (71%) indicates a rush to defend the Union by these Irish-born soldiers residing in New York City. And as James McPherson points out, it was these soldiers who joined in 1861 and 1862 who won the war for the Union. The average period of time signed up to serve was 2.5 years. The total number of our 260 soldiers eligible to reenlist (41 were killed in action) was 58/214 or 27%. The total number who did not reenlist due to being wounded was 86/216 or 40%. Healthy soldiers who did not reenlist comprised 69/216 or 32% of our sample. As far as finding evidence for bounty jumpers or deserters, I found only four deserters, and one soldier named James Burke who committed fraud.

Were both unskilled workers and Irish-Americans . . . proportionately underrepresented in the Union Army as McPherson claims? Out of about 260 soldiers in the Irish Brigade, I found occupational categories in the Pension Files for 214 men. Analysis of soldiers' occupations shows that over half were unskilled workers, and those soldiers usually described themselves as "laborer." There were, out of the 214 workers, 60 who described themselves as laborer and most of the other (55) labels are similar (painter, porter, hawker, fruit vendor, street cleaner). The skilled occupations listed included shoemakers, blacksmiths, bakers, bookbinder, and tinsmith, etc. With over half of the workers being unskilled, how can McPherson's data hold up for the Irish Brigade, which, incidentally, had 98% of the soldiers in my sample Ireland-born married Irish Catholics?

What connection exists, if any, regarding the immigration dates of our soldiers and issues related to patriotism that can be deduced from the historical literature on immigration? Out of our sample, we know the exact year of immigration for about 100 soldiers. Of the 100, pre-1859 immigration totaled 71; 29 arrived in 1860 or after. So less than one-third of our soldiers came to America either when war seemed likely or when fighting had commenced. Maybe those hoped to find employment in the Army. There is no way of knowing if these soldiers were impressed or crimped into the service. It is doubtful (from the Pension File data, anyway) that Tammany Hall played such an unpatriotic role as suggested by Iver Bernstein37 and James McPherson. There was a Tammany Regiment that supported the Irish Brigade's recruiting efforts (covered extensively elsewhere).

How many of our soldiers arrived in the 1845-48 famine migration? Only about 20% constituted famine migration. The number arriving in the 1850's was 50. The bulk of our recruits (for whom immigration data could be found) arrived in the U.S. in the 1850's-65 era, long after the famine was over. Brinley Thomas and W. F. Adams noted that when the U. S. was in a boom cycle of capitalism, more foreign workers would seek work here. We were in a boom cycle except for the years 1857-59. The Democratic Congress had passed the lowest tariff since 1790 in 1857; Northern bankers and manufacturers blamed them for the panic and for the low prices that followed. However unstable the U. S. economy was on the eve of the War, George Potter and Terry Coleman described how the "traders" in immigrants stressed that the streets in America were paved with gold, not that the Irish would be paving the streets; maybe soldiering had more social status, occupation-wise, and thus was a preferred employment avenue.38

The various motives for enlisting in the Irish Brigade need to be set off and ranked here (under patriotism). First, one must mention political and social inclusion near the top of the motives for joining list. Earned admission into U.S. society was possible with bravery in combat and honorable service. So being a "Celtic primitive warrior" was an asset rather than a liability. Secondly, there were a variety of economic motives--inducements for all Union soldiers such as military pay and bounties. Of the 250 Irish Brigade recruits who had known enlistment dates, 23% enrolled in the 1864-65 period and might have been "bounty-hunters" (although there is no hard Pension File evidence to support this idea). Obviously, those who had never fought against the Union were eligible to receive 160 acres of public domain under the 1862 Homestead Act if they would undertake to cultivate the land. Thirdly, one must list Irish nationalism, i.e., hatred of England and her ally, the South. That recruiters pitched their speeches to the least important motive for enlistment and were still so successful serves as a reminder of the power of atavistic sentiments shrewdly sounded.39

What was the impact of the Civil War Pension on the New York Irish? Between 1861 and 1899 Congress passed 6,791 Civil War Pension Acts.  Theda Skocpol demonstrated the pension's central role in American social policy formation in general; and the significance of pension receipt in particular as a way of honoring veterans and their families for having successfully defended the Union. For their sacrifices these brave soldiers were not only entitled to belong, but to live lives free from want--honorable and decent lives.  Even if circumstances precluded the family from achieving a minimum standard of living, receipt of a Civil War pension certified them as American--however uncertain their place in the social structure might be. Specifically, who got the money in the aggregate throws light on exactly how much service in the Irish Brigade was worth.40 

The various Civil War Pension Acts have a major theme of generosity, and of benefits and eligibility liberalization.  Throughout the 1860’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Congress enacted laws that provided soldiers and family members pension awards upon meeting the stated criteria.  Then, in 1890, Congress passed the Disability Pension Act.41  The evaluation of the 1890 Act by the Grand Army of the Republic Pension Committee was that it "was calculated to place upon the pension rolls 'all of the survivors of the war whose conditions of health are not practically perfect.'" 42  As one scholar has noted, the 1890 Act passed because "it was the high bid for the political support of the 450,000 G.A.R. men and other ex-soldiers, with both the Republican and the Democratic parties bidding."43  The Republican Congress of 1890 won the G.A.R. vote with excessively generous pension legislation.44 

As pension laws became more liberal and generous near the end of the nineteenth century (in 1890 one out of every seventy –seven people in the United States received a Civil War pension), did the receipt of a pension serve as a means of the New York City Irish gaining respectability in American life? Even if pensioners were elderly and in poor health when they started receiving a pension, their children would nonetheless inherit what was left of it and thereby enjoy a head start--an enhanced social and economic status in society. In the light of Kerby Miller's grim view of the Irish "situation," this is significant.45  Both respectability and survivability were at stake. Families receiving pensions were grouped in this study based on the degree to which the family was intact (type of pension awarded, when), amount of pension, over how many years. Then, having already earlier set the standard of living model for unpensioned workers in New York in the last half of the 19th century in the context of a family of four at $240 per annum, interesting details emerge.  Any person who received a pension before the 1890 liberalization law came into effect was by definition a person who had no "vicious habits," that is, they were not alcoholics or criminals, but were respectable. Witnesses had to swear under oath that the pension applicant was thus of sound moral character after verifying the length of time the applicant had been known and under what circumstances. Various legal documents and depositions required by the Pension Bureau in Washington connected the Irish Brigade with the Federal government bureaucracy--with America.46

Were the soldiers' families able to achieve this standard of living with the help of the pension?  Out of approximately 260 applications for pensions from all three New York Regiments, 200 were awarded. Fifty pensions were awarded before 1890. This comprises about 25% of all privates in our sample. Ninety-three pensions were awarded before and continued after 1890, or about 48% of our sample. Fifty-four pensions were awarded after 1890, or about 27% of the 200 soldiers surveyed.47 

What conclusions (in the aggregate) follow from the analysis of the three groups of pension applicants regarding respectability and attainment of the standard of living figure of $240 for a family of four in the Civil War era? Virtually all were respectable; Irish Brigade service had been worth a great deal.  Of those pensioned prior to 1890, about 50% (20 families) had incomes of $240 per year or more; about 50% (23) fell below, and were in the range Soltow labeled as poor--having a total estate of less than $100 (seven cases were lost due to computer error). Of the 98 who received a pension before 1890 that was continued after 1890, less than half superseded the $240 per year figure (44); half did not (54)--and were poor.  Of those pensioned post-1890, 32 families had incomes of $240 per year or more, and 22 families had incomes approaching Soltow's $100 total estate figure for being poor in America. Had there been no Civil War pension safety net, many families in the "Soltow poor" range would have perished immediately and anonymously.  Every family in all three groups had been drawn into the Pension Bureaucracy of the Federal Government, assimilated, and honored. The overwhelming majority of Irish Brigade recruits and their families had kept their part of the covenant; sometimes the U.S.A. failed them, but not their traditions.  Witness the history of the Finn family.

Michael Finn48 was born December 20, 1841, in Kings County, Ireland. He came to America in 1846 and later enlisted in Company A, 88th New York Infantry Regiment, as a private. He was wounded at Antietam on September 17, 1862, and died shortly afterwards on October 9, 1862. His father, Patrick, and his mother, Catherine, had married on November 23, 1841 in Kings County, just in time for Michael's birth a month later. Another child named Julia was born. She was an invalid from age 10. The family lived in many different places. Addresses included 311 E. 35th St. from 1861-69; 46th St. and 2nd Avenue from 1869-74; 46th St. between 2nd and 3rd Avenue from 1875-76. Patrick lived with a friend in the 21st Ward after 1877. His wife had died on February 24, 1867, in New York.

Michael's death was an economic as well as an emotional blow, because he had supported his family prior to his death. The father "was unable to earn sufficiently to support the family without the son's assistance and after the son's enlistment the family was in very poor circumstances the father being only able to work on odd jobs whenever he could get one."49 Other neighbors remember Michael buying food for his parents at Mrs. Healy's store: "She would buy groceries and he would pay for them; the father did not earn over one hundred and fifty dollars a year previous to and since 1862; after the son went away to the army the family appeared to be very poor and were often in want of the necessities of life the father being unable to support them."50 The father was just tired, old, and without a skill with which to earn a living; not intemperate. By his own recollection Patrick said: "I have always been temperate. I might have gone on a little spree but only once in a great while. When I obtained the last bounty money my wife spent some of it and then wanted to deposit the balance but we had some words and I took the money and went on a little spree and spent it."51 The last $100 of the bounty money paid the mother's funeral expenses. As a common laborer with asthma, Patrick was willing to work, but he often could not find work. When he did find work, it was usually for "the usual laborer's wages of one dollar a day."52 In an examination by a doctor on September 6, 1876, the surgeon noted: "The right eye has been emptied of its contents. He is aged beyond his years--is poorly nourished. Disability is total $8.00."53


Footnotes

 

 

1 Dennis Clark, Hibernia America: The Irish and Regional Cultures (Westport, CT., 1986), p. 68

 

2 See Marion Archer Truslow, “Peasants into Patriots: The New York Irish Brigade Recruits and their Families in the Civil War Era, 1850-1890” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1994); see the “Tables, Chapter IV” regarding Pension data for soldiers and families.  Also, soldiers discussed have Pension Files in the National Archives listed by their name (and Irish Brigade Regiment) on the microfilm index reel T-289, main microfilm room, National Archives, fifth floor.

 

3 See Patrick J. Blessing, “The Irish in America” in Michael Glazier, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (Notre Dame, 1999), pp. 460-462;  Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863 (New York, 1994), p. 20, pp. 185-231 for Appendix I-IX for the 1855 New York State Census in its various aspects and why it is more accurate than the U.S. Census for 1860; for the online version of the U.S. Census see Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-1990” in Population Division Working Paper No. 29 (Washington DC: Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 1999), pp. 1-18, available online at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/twps0029.html

 

4 Jeffrey A. Kroessler, New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis (New York, 2002), p. 106; Edward K. Spann, Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865 (New York, 2002), pp. 32-33; 138-141; see James Miller, Miller’s New York as it is; or Stranger’s Guide-Book to the Cities of New York,

Brooklyn, and Adjacent Places (New York, 1865), p. 99.

 

5 For the Terrence Winch quote see William H. A. Williams, “Irish Song in America” in The Encyclopedia of the Irisih in America, p. 477; Dennis Clark,

Hibernia America, pp. 1-33; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, p.       69, and his secrtions on unskilled labor in Chapter IV.

 

6 See the Pension Files in the National Archives, of the 88th , 69th , 63rd Regiments of New York Infantry;  see “Tables.” At the end of Chapter IV of “Peasants into Patriots, pp. 205-299.

 

7 See Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish immigrant women in the nineteenth century (New York, 1983), especially p. 27, “Interestingly, Irish women had few noneconomic activities.”

 

8 See Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, p. 83; Carol Groneman, “The Bloody Ould Sixth; A Social Analysis of a New York City Working-Class Community in the Mid-19th Century” (Ph.D. Diss, University of Rochester, 1973); Edith Abbott, “Wages of Unskilled Labor in the U.S., 1850-1900” in The Journal of Political Economy VIII (Chicago, 1905), pp. 321-367; Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860 ( Chicago, 1942), p. 409, p. 422, p. 393; p. 428 for the 4 room tenement rent in 1860 of $50;  Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850-1970 (New Haven, 1975).

 

9 See Edith Abbott, “The Wages of Unskilled Labor in the United States, 1850-1900”  pp. 359-360;  E.D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During the Civil War (New York, 1910), pp. 184-185.

 

10 David Scobey, Empire City:  the Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Philadelphia, 2002), p. 65.

 

11 See Jay P. Dolan, The Immigrant Church:  New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865 (Notre Dame, 1983) is what this section on the Roman Catholic Church in New York City is based on and summarized from; John A. Hassard, Life of Most Reverend John Hughes, D.D.  (New York, 1866), p. 212; see Emmet Larkin, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-1875” in the American Historical Review 77 (June, 1972):  625-52; the Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone, Vol.IX (New York, 1943), pp. 252-355 for facts about Hughes.

 

12 Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (Cambridge, 1959), p. 128.

 

13 Jay Dolan, The Immigrant Church, p. 46 and following

 

14 Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants, p. 128

 

15 John Miller, The End of Religious Controversy (New York, n.d.), pp. 243 and 122; Robert Gorman, Catholic Apologetical Literature in the United States, 1784-1858 (Washington, DC, 1939), pp. 53 and following; Dolan, The Immigrant Church, pp. 55-56

 

16 Jay Dolan, The Immigrant Church, p. 62; see the Pension File of Michael Sands in the National Archives for the quote below

 

17 James A. Burns, The growth and Development of the Catholic School System in the United States (New York, 1912), p. 124; Dolan, The Immigrant Church, p. 105; Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, pp. 140-141.

 

18 Ibid., pp. 115-116

 

19 Christian Brothers, The Third Book of Reading Lessons (Montreal, 1860), p. 4.; Christian Brothers, The Literary Class—Book of Fourth Series of Select Reading Lessons in Peace and Verse (New York, 1855),  pp. 248-50

 

20 Rev. Dr. J. Cummings, Songs for Catholic Schools and the Catechisms in Rhyme (New York, 1862), pp. 35-78; Dolan, The Immigrant Church, p. 118

 

21 Orestes Brownson, “The Church and the Republic,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review, July 1856, p. 303.

 

22 Dolan, The Immigrant Church, p. 137.

 

23 Quoted in Dolan, p.162.

 

24 Yehoshua Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge, MA, 1964), p. 297;

 

25 Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic (Middletown, CT., 1986), p. 40 is the basis for this paragraph on patriotism;  see James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870 (Chapel Hill, NC., 1978), p. 128.

 

26 See Dennis Clark, Hibernia America, especially the “Introduction” and Chapter 5, pp. 54-55

 

27 See Florence Gibson, The Attitudes of the New York Irish Toward State and National Affairs, 1848-1892 (New York, 1951), p. 18; Sidney David Brummer, Political History of New York State During the Period of the Civil War (New York, 1911); Ernest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City (Syracuse, 1990), p. 13; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, Chapter 14

 

28 See Adrian Cook, Armies of the Street (Lexington, 1974), p. 189, and Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life, p. 163; Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976), p. 255 Carl Wittke, The Irish in America (New York, 1970), p. 104; for the next paragraph on pubs see Brian Harrison, “Pubs” in The Victorian City: Images and Realities edited by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, I (London, 1973), especially pp. 171-182

 

29 See Robert Ernst,  pp. 163-166

 

30 Carl Wittke, The Irish in America, p. 122

 

31 Dale Knoble, Paddy and the Republic, pp. 65-82

 

32 The entire factual account regarding the riot is summarized from and based on Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Street, 158-209

 

33 James McPherson, “Civil War” in The New York Review of Books, 37 (September 13, 1990), 33-34; and McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 606-610

 

34 See the New York Times, kJan. 14, 1864; David P. Conyngham, The Irish Brigade (New York, 1867), pp. 424-444.

 

35 See the Pension File of Private John Gorman, 63rd Regiment of New York Infantry, National Archives

 

36 James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 606-609; 322-330; 430, 485, 491-493; 592 for the references to McPherson’s various points of view;  see Eugene Murdock’s two books entitled Patriotism Limited (Kent, 1967); and One Million Men (Madison, 1971), pp. 3-177; Peter Levine, “Draft Evasion in the North During the civil War, 1862-1865 in The Journal of American History, vol. 67, No. 4 (March, 1981), pp. 816-834.

 

37 See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots (New York, 1990), p. 196

 

38 See Brinley Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth (London, 1973); W.F. Adams, Ireland and Irish Emigration to the New World (New Haven, CT., 1932);  George Potter, To the Golden Door (Boston, 1960); Terry Coleman, Passage to America (London, 1972)

 

39 See Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die; Civil War Military tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1982) for the warrior tradition in Ireland and its impact on the South in the Civil War.

 

40 See William Henry Glasson’s History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States (New York, 1900), p. 122; and his expanded and updated Federal Military Pension in the United States (New York, 1918); and John William Oliver’s History of the Civil War Military Pensions: 1861-1885 (Madison, WI, 1917);   Theda Skopcol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origin of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992)

 

41 See Glasson Federal Military Pensions, pp. 234 et seq., on which this summary is based

 

42 Ibid., Glasson, p. 237, citing the Journal of the 24th National Encampment, G.A.R., 1890, p. 169.

 

43 Glasson, p. 238

 

44 Ibid., pp 250-295

 

45 See Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (New York, 1985).

 

46 See the Pension File of Private Michael Daly, 63rd Regiment of New York Infantry, National Archives, for the list of documents required of all soldiers who applied for the Civil War pension.  Just under a dozen items were required including certified death certificate of the soldier, marriage license, proof of a divorce, etc.

 

47 See Carol Groneman, “The Bloody Ould Sixth” p. 92 in which she arrived at the figure of 200 days of work out of the year; Edith Abbott, “Wages of Unskilled Labor in the U.S., 1850-1900” pp 321-367; Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860 (Chicago, 1942), p. 409, p.422, p.393, p. 428, p.378, p.425; Marion Casey, The Irish Middle Class in New York City, 1850-1870 (Unpublished MA Thesis, New York University, 1986), pp. 6-10, put the percent of Irish-born adult male working population of New York City who held some wealth in 1860 at 42%; Carl Wittke, The Irish in America (New York, 1978), p. 217; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life, pp. 73-79, p. 179, p. 213; W. Lloyd Warner, Social Class in America: The Evaluation of Status (New York, 1960); A Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Editors), Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1960), especially “Retail Prices After 1850” by Ethel D. Hoover, pp141-190 and Stanley Lebergott’s “Wage Trends, 1800-1900,” pp. 449-499; James D. Smith, ed., Studies in Income and Wealth XXXIX (New York, 1975), p. 233.

 

48 See the pension file of Michael Finn, National Archives.  The data in this account is derived from documents in that file, cited below.

 

49 Ibid., see the deposition of Catherine Corrigan of October 17, 1876

 

50 Ibid., deposition of Julia Fay, n.d.

 

51 Ibid., deposition of Patrick Finn of May 21, 1877

 

52 Ibid., deposition of Martin Carregan of May 13, 1877

 

53 Ibid., Surgeon’s deposition of September 6, 1876.  His wife and Catherine’s savings account from the East River Savings Bank is found in the pension file. From 1867-76, the yearly balance fluctuated between $115.00 and $55.00.