This thesis covers the involvement and influence of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in Virginia during the Civil War. Because the Methodists were the largest religious denomination in the South at the onset of the war, the Church was in a position to offer support and to shape the opinions of the Confederate people. Using sermons, religious tracts, newspapers, and letters, this study demonstrates that the majority of the Church supported the Confederacy and its aims.

During the American Civil War, New York State’s irrepressible Irish Brigade was alternately composed of a number of infantry regiments hailing both from within New York City and from within and without the state, not all of them Irish, or even predominantly so. The Brigade’s core structure, however, remained constant throughout the war years and consisted of three all-Irish volunteer regiments with names corresponding to fighting units made famous in the annuals of Ireland’s history: the 69th, the 88th, and the 63rd.