Most people these days would associate Irish Republicanism with the Catholic Irish, and the Orange Order with the Protestant Irish. The reality is, though, that the Irish Republican movement was founded by Protestants such as Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone, with the explicit aim of uniting Ireland's religious traditions in a common front to secure Irish independence. The Orange Order was created with the collusion of the British authorities with the specific goal of promoting sectarian religious hatred in order to “divide and conquer.”

The Irish and the English had been at war on and off since the original Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century, but until the creation of Irish Republicanism the war was essentially tribal. It was a struggle between the Gaelic clans and the English colonists, and each clan fought primarily to preserve its own local power and autonomy, not to drive the English out of the whole country. After the final defeat of the Gaelic chieftains and their exile in Europe, Irish resistance shifted to the rural peasantry, who fought mostly to defend their Catholic religion against oppressive laws.

The United Irishmen, on the other hand, were politically radical in a way that no previous Irish rebel group had ever been. Their goal was for the Irish Presbyterians to make common cause with the Irish Catholics, fight for Irish independence, and then establish a new political order guaranteeing the vote for all, free and fair elections, and the equality of Protestants and Catholics. If the United Irishmen had succeeded, Ireland would have been spared two centuries of sectarian strife and bloodshed. In the end, they were defeated, and the British government began a policy of actively encouraging hatred between the two religions in order to maintain its own supremacy.