The NCO Are of Irish Birth and Catholic: Thomas Grey’s Irish/American Quest for a US Army Commission, 1846–55

Thomas Grey was born in Ireland, circa 1820. He emigrated from Ireland as a teenager, however, and spent the rest of his life in the uniform of the United States. A sergeant of nine years’ service when the U.S. went to war with Mexico in 1846, he spent the next nine years pursuing a lieutenancy in the regular army. The quest reveals that he saw himself as entitled to such as any native-born American. He used Jacksonian rhetoric on merit and elites to defend his aspirations, and utilized Democratic patronage networks to assist his efforts. Yet the army and the process refreshed and reinforced his sense of Irish Catholicism at the same time that it introduced American language and pathways. His political connections began with a priest, and he hoped Catholics like Roger Taney and James Shields (US Senator from Illinois) would assist him. He routinely attributed the failure of his efforts to nativism. Even as he sought a permanent office in America, he followed affairs in Ireland and declared his willingness to join an Irish rebellion against Britain. Most studies of antebellum enlisted men separate foreigners from various categories of citizens. Grey’s case suggests a soldier could naturalize, and yet remain alienated.