A few years after the Five Points Riot, the Civil War began. Though they protested violently against unfair draft laws, tens of thousands of Irish men volunteered and fought bravely in the Union Army. After the war, while Irish Immigration continued, the Irish-American working class underwent important changes.

Irish-American working men gained in skill and began to build alliances with native born working men. When the labor movement revived in the 1870s and '80s, Irish-American men played key roles as leaders, organizers and members of the rank and file.

Irish traditions of militancy and solidarity helped shape American unions in the late 19th Century. Irish-American workers drew on their experience of English oppression to confront new problems caused by the growing power of American industrial capitalism. Irish-American labor activists linked the call for Ireland's freedom with a demand for equality for American workers.

The 1870s and 1880s saw other changes as well. The Irish joined the American Catholic church in increasing numbers. Through political machines, some Irish men won positions in City Hall and in police and fire departments around the country. Other Irish men helped form alternative workers' parties to fight political corruption.

While the Irish-American working class community grew in strength, new immigrant groups began arriving in New York and other cities. In the 1890s, as America grew ever more urban and industrial, millions of Italians, Jews, Poles and other Eastern European immigrants joined the Irish in the new American working class. Separately and together, immigrants would draw on their various traditions to meet the challenge of urban life in industrial America.

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