Embracing Emancipation
A Transatlantic History of Irish Americans, Slavery, and the American Union, 1840-1865
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WINNER, 2024 LAWRENCE J. McCAFFREY PRIZE FOR BEST BOOK ON IRISH AMERICA
Challenges conventional narratives of the Civil War era that emphasize Irish Americans’ unceasing opposition to Black freedom
Embracing Emancipation tackles a perennial question in scholarship on the Civil War era: Why did Irish Americans, who claimed to have been oppressed in Ireland, so vehemently opposed the antislavery movement in the United States? Challenging conventional answers to this question that focus on the cultural, political, and economic circumstances of the Irish in America, Embracing Emancipation locates the origins of Irish American opposition to antislavery in famine-era Ireland. There, a distinctively Irish critique of abolitionism emerged during the 1840s, one that was adopted and adapted by Irish Americans during the sectional crisis. The Irish critique of abolitionism meshed with Irish Americans’ belief that the American Union would uplift Irish people on both sides of the Atlantic—if only it could be saved from the forces of disunion.
Whereas conventional accounts of the Civil War itself emphasize Irish immigrants’ involvement in the New York City draft riots as a brutal coda to their unflinching opposition to emancipation, Delahanty uncovers a history of Irish Americans who embraced emancipation. Irish American soldiers realized that aiding Black southerners’ attempts at self-liberation would help to subdue the Confederate rebellion. Wartime developments in the United States and Ireland affirmed Irish American Unionists’ belief that the perpetuity of their adopted country was vital to the economic and political prospects of current and future immigrants and to their hopes for Ireland’s independence. Even as some Irish immigrants evinced their disdain for emancipation by lashing out against Union authorities and African Americans in northern cities, many others argued that their transatlantic interests in restoring the Union now aligned with slavery’s demise. While myriad Irish Americans ultimately abandoned their hostility to antislavery, their backgrounds in and continuously renewed connections with Ireland remained consistent influences on how the Irish in America took part in debate over the future of American slavery.
Ian Delahanty has provided an important corrective to the oversimplification of our understanding of the Irish American position on slavery, antislavery, and race. He shows that Irish opinion changed over time in response to the evolving situation on both sides of the Atlantic. And he also emphasizes the way that the attitudes were far from homogenous within the Irish American community. His research, grounded in the rhetoric in Irish American and other newspapers, is solid, and in addition to the sophisticated analysis of that rhetoric, he provides pithy bits of narrative that engage the reader and illustrate his points.---Angela F. Murphy, Professor of History, Texas State University
With his innovative questions and research, Delahanty traces out a narrative that looks not to exclusively domestic causes within the United States, but examines Irish-Americans as a self-conscious exile community, determined to end their native island’s oppression by England, while at the same time demonstrating loyalty to the United States.---Emerging Civil War Blog
Over a million and a half Irish fled national devastation inflicted by the Great Famine of 1845–52 while, a decade later, the Civil War threatened the foundations of the American Republic. Delahanty intriguingly connects these episodes in a vortex of antislavery activism, nationalist politics, and immigrant settlement.---Choice Reviews
Introduction | 1
1 “We want no slave lecturing here”: The Irish Critique of Abolitionism | 15
2 “Over the broad Atlantic”: Abolitionist Appeals to Emigrants and Immigrants | 42
3 Irish-American Unionism and Slavery | 65
4 “As if I was a common Irishman”: The Irish-American Critique of Antislavery | 99
5 Irish Americans and the Union War | 134
6 Unionism and Emancipation on the Home Front and Battlefield | 168
7 “All true Republicans”: Irish- American Leaders and Emancipation | 203
Conclusion: Irish America and Ireland after the Civil War | 237
Acknowledgments | 251
Notes | 253
Bibliography | 293
Index | 313
