In this essay, I examine how two Irish American leaders considered, and helped to shape, several threads within the transformation of American nationalism that took place during the Civil War era. Both men went further than simply urging devotion to the Union; they interpreted
In this essay, I examine how two Irish American leaders considered, and helped to shape, several threads within the transformation of American nationalism that took place during the Civil War era. Both men went further than simply urging devotion to the Union; they interpreted military service to that cause as a way for Irish Americans to claim fuller inclusion in the American people. As I show, Meagher and Guiney point to a more nuanced possibility than is offered by most historians who debate whether Irish American service to the Union helped accelerate assimilation of their ethnic community into American society: fuller integration alongside maintenance of an ethnic and religious identity. As a part of this impulse, Meagher and Guiney envisioned a more robust and better defined concept of American national citizenship in law and practice, one that incorpor