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Upon realizing that the division that held Marye’s Heights was composed of several Irish regiments, Union Captain D.P. Conyngham remarked that the men of the Brigade were “pitted against their countrymen.” <ref> Conyngham, ''The Irish Brigade'', 337.</ref> This is an incorrect statement as one cannot simultaneously fight for and against the same country. Ethnicity, not nationality, was the common thread that linked the Irish soldiers of opposing armies, thereby making it impossible for enemy combatants to be considered fellow countrymen. The opposing soldiers shared an ethnic heritage and were, at a previous time, fellow countrymen; however, at the time of battle, the country that was home to the Irish soldiers of the 24th Georgia Regiment was the Confederate States of America just as the men who marched with Meagher were members of the United States of America. Soldiers such as William McCarter belonged to only one country at the moment they were battling Irish Confederates in Fredericksburg.

Private McCarter published a detailed account of the battle as seen through only his eyes. In the entirety of his memoirs, he never once mentioned the Irish ethnicity of the enemy. He spoke of both his fellow Union soldiers and those of the Confederacy as men who fought for “their country.”<ref> McCarter, ''My Life in the Irish Brigade'', 175.</ref> Irishmen like McCarter and Private Williams of the 24th Georgia were both born in Ireland and were at one time fellow countrymen. They were again upon their arrival in America. After Georgia seceded from the Union (January 19, 1861); however, Williams became a citizen of the Confederacy thus severing national ties with McCarter. Ethnically, nothing had changed, yet with the cultural and political influences to which these men were exposed upon enlistment into the army, each man began to adopt a new identity.