An Irish immigrant who fled the Irish Potato Famine, John Carroll settled in New Orleans, where he began to construct a new life. He established strong cultural ties with the Irish American community while working as a laborer for eleven years. In 1860, Carroll became a dance professor, which connected him with the middle and upper classes of New Orleanians, whose daughters he instructed. He enlisted at Camp Moore in order to protect this fragile new life that he built for himself in Louisiana and to prove that he was an American. Carroll fought in every major engagement in the eastern theatre of the war through the Battle of Gettysburg, before tragically losing his life in the second day of the fighting.