On tonight's show: Irish-Americans in the Union military; and the collapse of the Boundary Commission a century ago

Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861-1865

For years, historian Damian Shiels has been uncovering the hidden stories of the Irish in the American Civil War. Through his website and his research in U.S. pension archives, he's spent well over a decade piecing together the voices of ordinary Irish men who fought for the Union.

Now, in his new book Green & Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865, published by LSU Press, he brings that work together - and challenges the familiar story of the Irish Brigade.

Drawing on more than a thousand wartime letters, found in widows’ and dependents’ pension files, it reveals that most Irish soldiers didn’t serve under green flags at all. They fought in regular blue regiments and in the Union Navy, where their service has long been overlooked.

It’s a major new social history that asks us to rethink how Irish America fought, and how it remembered the war. Damian Shiels joins Myles to discuss these Irish Americans in the Union Military.

The Boundary Commission

This week marks a hundred years since the collapse of the Irish Boundary Commission - the body that was supposed to decide the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.

Before looking at that moment and its consequences, we explore one of the lingering questions left in the wake of The Boundary Commission. It’s a question that still doesn’t have a clear answer today: who owns Lough Foyle? Our reporter, Marc McMenamin, has been looking into it.

The collapse of the Boundary Commission was that moment when hopes of redrawing the border all but disappeared.

On the 7th November 1925, an article appeared in the English Conservative newspaper, the Morning Post. It read: "Irish Boundary Changes – Special Forecast of the Commissioners' Findings. How Ulster Will Fare. No Big Slice of Territory for the Free State" That last part was particularly disappointing for many south of the border.

The Boundary Commission had been set up under the Anglo-Irish Treaty to decide where exactly the new border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland should lie, with many hoping it would shift that line significantly in favour of the Free State.

Many hoped the Commission’s recommendation would deliver substantial transfers; parts of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Derry, and South Armagh; to the Free State. But by late 1925, it was becoming clear that the changes would be far more limited, and the leaked report in the Morning Post confirmed those fears - even suggesting that some territory, like East Donegal, would go the other way.

To talk about this leak and its aftermath I’m joined now by two guests - Cormac Moore is author of the book The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission which is published by Irish Academic Press.

I’m joined also on the line from Belfast by historian Samuel Beckton, author of the new book The Unbroken Covenant, published by Peter Lang, which explores the possibility of a nine-county Northern Ireland and how it might have fared.

Samuel is also one of the organisers of the The 1925 Irish Boundary Commission Centenary Conference, taking place this coming Friday the 7th of November at PRONI, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. And that’s open to the public if you want to go and find out more about the wide topic of the partition of Ireland, its roots and its impact.