Christian G. Samito

In Becoming American under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship During the Civil War Era, Christian G. Samito “explores how, amid the tempest of war, statesmen, soldiers, and ordinary people forged a more robust definition of citizenship” (pg. 2). He argues, “Through separate but simultaneous efforts, African Americans and Irish Americans in the 1860s helped solidify three principles in the law: the primacy of a national citizenship that incorporated certain rights; the concept that individuals had the right to change their birth citizenship and allegiance; and the doctrine that all citizens, whether by birth of [sic] naturalization, stood equal in rights and protections regardless of race or prior status as a slave or alien” (pg. 4). In this way, Samito “engages military, legal, social, political, and diplomatic history and, as a study of changing ideas of American citizenship, [his work] encompasses evidence on a national scale” (pg. 10).

Addressing Irish service in the Civil War, Samito writes, “Irish American soldiers became the vanguard for those of their community who argued that service to the Republic defeated nativism, served as a communion between Irish Americans and native-born Americans, and earned Irish Americans an identity and equal inclusion as American citizens. Irish Americans argued that they established their place as full members within the polity, despite their lack of birthright citizenship, based on their choice to embrace and support the same political values that native-born American citizens held dear” (pg. 43). Of African Americans, Samito writes, “While some blacks may have enlisted for financial reasons, or because federal agents conscripted them, most joined the military for political motives, or eventually came to understand the broader significance and potential of their service. While prejudice in the armed forces persisted throughout the Civil War, serving in them also presented an opportunity for change which blacks eagerly seized, and it afforded them experiences that helped inform their evolving sense of what citizenship entailed as a concept” (pg. 47).

Discussing wartime attitudes, Samito writes, “Irish Americans and the native-born embraced each other in the 1860s in bonds strengthened by the shared experience of war. Participation in the Civil War intensified the demands of Irish Americans for inclusion and equal treatment but also their sense of American allegiance, even as they maintained facets of their ethnic culture and an enduring concern for Ireland’s liberation. Many Irish Americans increasingly came to recognize during the Civil War an American identity in addition to an Irish one” (pg. 103). He continues, “The service of Irish Americans allowed for them to assert that they deserved greater inclusion in American society and equality of citizenship based on the proof of loyalty offered by their military service” (pg. 132-133). Turing to African Americans, Samito writes, “The shared experiences of military service strengthened unity and American identity within the black community. Military service also helped inform black expectations of what citizenship entailed and afforded African Americans a powerful argument that those who defended the Union deserved full membership in its society. During the Civil War, blacks began to meet once again to assert their demands through national and state conventions that directly addressed governmental officials and spoke to white and black Americans” (pg. 143).

Samito concludes, “African Americans and Irish Americans energetically helped to shape the more modern and better-defined understanding of national citizenship that Americans fashioned after the Civil War. The experience of defending the Republic strengthened for many Irish Americans and African Americans their American identity and brought greater self-recognition of their allegiance to the United States” (pg. 217).… (altro)