“All of That Class That Infest N.Y.”

Ryan Keating’s work examines the linkages between national loyalty and ethnic identity, turning to the subject of Irish American immigrants. Looking at Irish-American communities in Connecticut and Wisconsin, Keating surveys their response to the infamous 1863 New York City draft riots. People of Irish descent faced severe discrimination and hardship. Their ethnicity and Roman Catholicism caused many non-Irish to doubt their loyalty and assimilation into American life. The many Irish migrants among the rioters was were taken as “evidence of broader ethnic disloyalty,” writes Keating, which “symbolically and intrinsically linked these events to larger issues surrounding the loyalty of Democrats.” Keating shows, however, that there was widespread disapproval of the rioting among Irish-Americans in other communities. It indicates both the complexity of their responses to the war’s divisive issues and the lack of a monolithic character to Irish immigrants living in America. They were eager to demonstrate their national loyalty through such means as military service. Keating argues that their identities became as deeply entwined with their communities and adopted nation as with a common Irish heritage.

Loyal to the Union

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai explores perceptions of national loyalty held by college-educated northern men during the war. His work draws on the writings of a group of New England graduates, whom he labels the New Brahmins. He highlights how their sense of moral duty as educated elites, along with their commitment to the Union, compelled them to enlist into the army. Focusing on McClellan’s leadership, the controversy of emancipation, and the election of 1864, Wongsrichanalai shows how these men viewed military and political issues through nonpartisan lenses. Holding military success and union victory as the priority, these soldiers were quite critical of partisan devotionand unquestioned support of the government. According to the author, the New Brahmins reflect an understudied northern honor or nationalism, in which elite young officers pursued the greater good of society without fear of individual consequences.

“We Are Setting the Terms Now”

In this essay, Julie A. Mujicuses the private letters of two young lovers to examine the interplay between national and personal loyalties during the war. Married in 1865, the courting couple Gideon Winan Allen and Annie Cox spent much of the war separated from each other while Allen pursued a law degree. Remarkably, their correspondence frequently touched on issues of the war’s politics and offers a window onto the intersection of personal and political spheres. Though seemingly incompatible,Cox and Allenmade great efforts to preserve their relationship despite their disagreements. Allen was an ardent Peace Democrat, outspoken on campus for his Copperhead activism, while Cox was a devout Republican of abolitionist outlook, frequently critical of his words and behaviour. Amid the romantic exchanges, we find sometimes intense arguments over weighty issues, including the legitimacy of the war, the justice of the draft, and the necessity of emancipation. Mujic argues that their diametrically opposed political views ultimately stressed but did not break their bonds of affection and that personal loyalties ultimately outweighed opposing political ideologies.

Connecticut Copperhead Constitutionalism

Matthew Warshauer examines the Democratic Peace Movement in Connecticut to explain partisan perspectives on national loyalty. Warshauer argues that the state’s anti-war Democrats consistently stressed the importance of the Constitution, rather than the Declaration of Independence, as the litmus test of loyal citizenship. This ideology of Constitutionalism, emphasizing the power of the states and the limits of federal authority, was the core component of their vocal opposition to emancipation, conscription, and other wartime Republican measures. In studying their ideology, Warshauer also speaks to other important themes, including the development of the anti-war movement outside of the Midwest, the debate over alleged Democratic secret societies, Republican rhetoric of Democratic treason, and the vital political connections between the home front and battlefield.

“Dedicated to the Proposition”

Melinda Lawson explores the meaning of national loyalty through the writings of abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, anti-slavery Congressman George Julian, and President Abraham Lincoln. The author stresses that elite men were moved by notionsof “duty,” compelling them to uphold moral principles in their civic roles. Lawson’s work suggests the challenges men of antislavery conviction faced in a slaveholding republic where the Constitution nurtured the “peculiar institution.” Theirs was not a national loyalty of blind allegiance to the Constitution and the laws. Instead, each of the three held as sacred the ideals of liberty and equality written in the Declaration of Independence. This chapter traces how each man navigated the complicated duties of a true patriot through disunion and war.

“A Source of Mortification to All Truly Loyal Men”

In this essay, Timothy Orr focuses on the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh to reveal how employers used allegations of partisan disloyalty to weaken the rights and protections of war workers. As Orr relates, political discrimination underlay the purge of fifteen factory workers charged with disloyal speech in May 1863. The men were accused by fellow workers of uttering statements critical of Lincoln and his war policies. Their dismissal following an extrajudicial inquiry sparked a heated partisan exchange in area newspapers. Orr argues that popular attitudes toward war workers during the Civil War contrasted sharply with those of the World Wars. In the latter era, this work was seen more clearly in patriotic terms, as a substitute for military service in the national cause. In the Civil War, however, military work alone was not satisfactory proof of patriotism. Workers in military manufacturing then were held to a standard of loyalty regulating not just actions but also their words.

“American Matrons and Daughters”

Judith Giesberg explores the intersection of national loyalty debates and the labor activism of Philadelphia seamstresses in war industries. Women workers understood the vital service they performed sewing military uniforms and equipment but were largely exploited and vulnerable in a system of federal contracting reliant on middle-men and “outwork.” Giesberg argues that the exploitation of women workers, and the denigration of their labor activism, rested on an idealized depiction of female patriotism in supporting roles, as soldiers’ wives and family. Working class women turned the rhetorical tables by laying claim to their own service and patriotism, legitimizing their protests in a republican language of rights and tyranny. In examining seamstresses’ protests at the Schuylkill Arsenal, Giesberg uncovers a forgotten chapter in American labor history, connecting antebellum activism with Gilded Age strife. The author depicts a brief window of opportunity where women challenged the formative stage of the sweatshop system drawing in part on professions of their own loyalty.

“Patriotism Will Save Neither You Nor Me”

Sean A. Scott’s essay addresses the attitudes of Northern Protestant churches on issues of patriotism and loyalty. Scott examines the 1862 resignation of Presbyterian minister William S. Plumer whose Allegheny City, Pennsylvania congregation judged his pronouncements to be devoid of patriotic sentiment. Plumer’s was the rare case of a minister who placed strict separation between political and religious spheres. Scott depicts Plumer as a man of true Christian integrity, whose ouster demonstrates the complex impacts of the “politics of loyalty.” Scott’s study offers a counter to a historical consensus that depicts northern clergy as at best pro-war “cheerleaders.” His work offers an instructive case of a minister who fell outside the patriotic, Republican, emancipationist mould. Plumer’s ordeal also illustrates the challenges of clergy in the border-states who faced divided congregations and the scrutiny of civil and military authorities.

“I Do Not Understand What the Term ‘Loyalty’ Means”

Jonathan W. White’s essay studies compensation debates in the Pennsylvania State Legislature to illuminate partisan conceptions of treason and loyalty. Pennsylvanians along the southern border were victimized by multiple Confederate invasions. The widespread damage to property, including thousands made homeless in the 1864 burning of Chambersburg, sparked heated debates in the statehouse over compensation for losses. At issue was the perceived loyalty of the purported victims. In an overwhelmingly Democratic region, many were assumed to give aidand encouragement to the enemy because of their political affiliation. White’s essay examines how Republican legislators attempted to impose loyalty oaths and tests of “proof” to prevent those deemed unworthy and “disloyal” from receiving aid. In the process, White’s narrative sheds light on how Republicans developed and employed a rhetoric of “loyalty” to denigrate their political opponents and foster support for Republican war measures.

Introduction

This volume explores the significance and meanings of “loyalty” in the Northern states during the Civil War. Collectively, these essays use the experiences of differing individuals or groups to illuminate the ways in which notions of loyalty were defined and contested. A number of patterns emerge. First, discussions of the term went beyond a narrow definition of loyalty as nationalism. Support for the government and for the Union cause was but one layer of potential meaning. The debate over what loyalty entailed, though, was not limited to proofs or expressions of patriotism. Strong allegiances to other social groups and their ideologies or interests coexisted with those to the perceived nation. Individuals often acted out of affinity for self, family, community, region, or ethnicity, and held principles that could work at cross-purposes to nationalism (Christian pacifism being an example of the latter). Multiple and overlapping layers of loyalty were not always mutually exclusive but the demands and suffering of war brought out inherent tensions and potential conflicts. These essays stress how such debates were not confined to the political arena. Discussions of loyalty intruded into many public and private spaces including homes, city streets, places of work and worship, and onto college campuses. Authors examine the significance of loyalty across fault lines of gender, social class and education, race and ethnicity, and political or religious affiliation. These differing vantage points reveal the complicated ways in which loyalties were defined, prioritized, acted upon, and related. Scholars of the Confederate home front have lit the way, examining in depth the pull of conflicting loyalties and their implications for Southern defeat. The Union may have prevailed but Northern society struggled with its own profound internal divisions. Historians have labored over parts of this story. We know a great deal, for instance, about political dissent and “Copper head” opposition. This collection pushes us to see how a fractious and diverse Northern people ultimately failed to reach consensus on what loyalty meant or how citizens in times of war might demonstrate it. It also suggests that the development of American nationalism had important limitations and ambiguities that the war exposed....