box wood branchs in their hats and so there was a little sort of splash of green across the union blue uniform to let everyone know they were irish and so that's a strategy. that's a way of asserting yourself and saying i am american but i am also irish. so this is a context in which american and irish identities fuse even more tightly. it's not a coincidence that anti-catholic and anti-irish nativism diminishes considerably in the immediate aftermath of the war. it will come back later in the 19th century, but for a while the irish demonstration of their loyalty really proves to people that there is a reason to accept the irish as legitimate americans in this process. this is an irish catholic -- i am assuming they're irish. i am certain they're almost all entirely irish from a boston unit celebrating mass on the battlefield. the picture is not identified. i don't know which unit it is. i don't know who the priest is. there is a couple of women in the picture, so my hunch is this is at camp before the battle started. there weren't a lot of photographers running around on civil war battlefield