The Story Behind The Immigrants’ Civil War Picture

July 18, 2013

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I wanted to take just a few moments to write about the picture on The Immigrants’ Civil War logo. When I was designing the logo almost three years ago, I wanted the picture to convey what the series was about.

When I looked at other Civil War websites and blogs, the logos they used drew on just a few types of graphic illustration. Most common was the heroic painting of men in combat or on the march. Some were painted during the war, others were modern by artists like Mort Kunstler. A second type featured a painting or photo of a Civil War commander, like Grant, Sherman, Jackson, or Lee, or a civilian leader, most commonly Lincoln. The third type was a modern color photo of a Civil War battlefield focusing on either a monument or a set of artillery.

Here are some examples:

I thought these would all be wrong for this series. While I cover many major battles, nearly 70% of the articles are on what happened off the field. I wanted a logo that conveyed the sense that immigrant soldiers saw themselves as representing their families and their communities. So I settled on a photo that was different from the images used in just about every other Civil War blog or website. One in which the most prominent figures include a woman, two children, and a baby.

What a magnificent woman she is. Defying Victorian conventions of delicacy, she is in camp with the man she loves, exposed to the same rough life he lives during her time there. Look at her arms. Like most women of the day she worked from dawn until she fell asleep. Her bulging biceps didn’t come from the gym. She has brought him food, sustenance connecting him to his home. She is showing her affection for him, and, by bringing their children, she is reminding him that his service involves the whole family. If he is killed or wounded, the lives of three very young people will be changed forever, and their hurt will be carried well into the 20th Century.

Now look at the children. The son is in a little boy’s version of a Union uniform. He identifies fully with his father’s service. He is still a boy though, as you can see by how tightly he clutches the dog in his arms. His sister, like most girls of the era, has been pressed into service as the “little mother”, acting as a caretaker for the family’s baby.

I also like the fact that while this is a posed family group portrait, there are seven other members of the regiment scattered in the background. While they seem to be randomly placed, they are all facing the camera, and their facial expressions unambiguously tell us that they know they are being photographed. They are this father’s military family, one that may take him away from his home front family for years or even forever.

The photo was taken at the camp of the 31st Pennsylvania Regiment 2nd Pennsylvania Reserve. The regiment was primarily recruited in Philadelphia in the first two months of the war. The 31st was not an “immigrant regiment”, but it included men like Private John R. Query of Company E. Query had emigrated from County Antrim in Ireland in 1850 when he was a little boy. From a Protestant Irish family, he enlisted as a teenager in a company called the “Scotch Rifles.” As a “Scots Irish” he may have felt comfortable in the culture of the company. Query did not survive the war, dying of wounds suffered at Gettysburg.

Company C of the 31st had the distinctly Irish name of the Hibernia Fire Engine Target Company. Men with names like Casey and O’Brien fought in it. A company from Lancaster in “the Dutch Country” included many men with German surnames.

There is a second picture of the same family in a more relaxed pose.

As this detail from this picture shows, the children are no longer in the middle of a military camp. They are at home.

The photo was taken at Fort Slocum, part of the Washington defenses. It is credited as an 1862 photo taken by Matthew Brady’s studio.

The Immigrants’ Civil War is a series that examines the role of immigrants in our bloodiest war. Articles will appear twice monthly between 2011 and 2017. Here are the articles we have published so far:

1. Immigrant America on the Eve of the Civil War – Take a swing around the United States and see where immigrants were coming from and where they were living in 1861.

2. 1848: The Year that Created Immigrant America – Revolutions in Europe, famine and oppression in Ireland, and the end of the Mexican War made 1848 a key year in American immigration history.

3. Carl Schurz: From German Radical to American Abolitionist– A teenaged revolutionary of 1848, Carl Schurz brought his passion for equality with him to America.

4. Immigrant Leader Carl Schurz Tells Lincoln to Stand Firm Against Slavery.

5. …And the War Came to Immigrant America -The impact of the firing on Fort Sumter on America’s immigrants

6. The Rabbi Who Seceded From the South

7. The Fighting 69th-Irish New York Declares War

8. The Germans Save St. Louis for the Union

9. New York’s Irish Rush to Save Washington

10. Immigrant Day Laborers Help Build the First Fort to Protect Washington-The Fighting 69th use their construction skills.

11. Carl Schurz Meets With Lincoln To Arm the Germans

12. Immigrants Rush to Join the Union Army-Why?– The reasons immigrants gave for enlisting early in the war.

13. Why the Germans Fought for the Union?

14. Why Did the Irish Fight When They Were So Despised?

15. The “Sons of Garibaldi” Join the Union Army

16. The Irish Tigers From Louisiana

17. Immigrant Regiments on Opposite Banks of Bull Run -The Fighting 69th and the Louisiana Tigers

18. The St. Louis Germans Set Out To Free Missouri

19. Wilson’s Creek Drowns Immigrant Dream of Free Missouri

20. English-Only in 1861: No Germans Need Apply

21. After Bull Run: Mutineers, Scapegoats, and the Dead

22. St. Louis Germans Revived by Missouri Emancipation Proclamation

23. Jews Fight the Ban on Rabbis as Chaplains

24. Lincoln Dashes German Immigrants Hopes for Emancipation

25. When Hatred of Immigrants Stopped the Washington Monument from Being Built

26. Inside the Mind of a Know Nothing

27. The Evolution of the Know Nothings

28. The Know Nothings Launch a Civil War Against Immigrant America

29. The Know Nothings: From Triumph to Collapse

30. The Lasting Impact of the Know Nothings on Immigrant America.

31. Lincoln, the Know Nothings, and Immigrant America.

32. Irish Green and Black America: Race on the Edge of Civil War.

33. The Democratic Party and the Racial Consciousness of Irish Immigrants Before the Civil War

34. The Confederates Move Against Latino New Mexico

35. Nuevomexicanos Rally As Confederates Move Towards Santa Fe—But For Which Side?

36. The Confederate Army in New Mexico Strikes at Valverde

37. The Swedish Immigrant Who Saved the U.S. Navy

38. The Confederates Capture Santa Fe and Plot Extermination

39. A German Regiment Fights for “Freedom and Justice” at Shiloh-The 32nd Indiana under Col. August Willich.

40. The Know Nothing Colonel and the Irish Soldier Confronting slavery and bigotry.

41. Did Immigrants Hand New Orleans Over to the Union Army?

42. Did New Orleans’ Immigrants See Union Soldiers As Occupiers or Liberators?

43. Union Leader Ben Butler Seeks Support in New Orleans-When General Ben Butler took command in New Orleans in 1862, it was a Union outpost surrounded by Confederates. Butler drew on his experience as a pro-immigrant politician to win over the city’s Irish and Germans.

44. Union General Ben Butler Leverages Immigrant Politics in New Orleans

45. Thomas Meager: The Man Who Created the Irish Brigade

46. Thomas Meagher: The Irish Rebel Joins the Union Army

47. Recruiting the Irish Brigade-Creating the Irish American

48. Cross Keys: A German Regiment’s Annihilation in the Shenandoah Valley

49. The Irish Brigade Moves Towards Richmond-The Irish brigade in the Peninsula Campaign from March 17 to June 2, 1862.

50. Peninsula Emancipation: Irish Soldiers Take Steps on the Road to Freedom-The Irish Brigade and Irish soldiers from Boston free slaves along the march to Richmond.

51. Slaves Immigrate from the Confederacy to the United States During the Peninsula Campaign

52. The Irish 9th Massachusetts Cut Off During the Seven Days Battles

53. Union Defeat and an Irish Medal of Honor at the End of the Seven Days

54. Making Immigrant Soldiers into Citizens-Congress changed the immigration laws to meet the needs of a nation at war.

55. Carl Schurz: To Win the Civil War End Slavery