The Irish Brigade Fought in America’s Civil War

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Out Hanover Street in Fredericksburg they marched that December morning in 1862, sprigs of green in their caps, a bright green battle flag, with gold harp and the ancient Gaelic words ‘Riamh Nar dhruid O sbairn lan‘ (’Never retreat from the clash of spears’) defiantly emblazoned on it, held high as shot and shell exploded all around in a blaze of red and orange. Ahead was an open plain and then two hills known as Marye’s Heights, covered with Confederate artillery. At the base of the hills was a sunken road behind a stone wall.

Pausing to regroup behind a slight rise on the plain, they quickly dressed ranks and formed line of battle in brigade front. Then the commands rang out. ‘Right shoulder, shift arms, battalion forward, guide center, march!’ They double-quicked across the plain toward the stone wall amid the seep of musketry and canister. The blue lines staggered and slowed as men fell like leaves in an autumn wind. Passing under the range of the artillery on the hills, they were suddenly met by a sheet of flame as the confederates behind the stone wall fired. A member of the 8th Ohio Infantry noted as they passed his unit that each man had ‘a half-laughing, half-murderous look in his eye. They pass to our left, poor glorious fellows, shaking goodbye to us with their hats! They reach a point within a stone’s throw of the stone wall. No farther. They try to go beyond but are slaughtered. Nothing could advance farther and live.’

That was the Irish Brigade in the Battle of Fredericksburg, paying with their lives for Burnside’s tragic blunder. And for the only time in its short proud history the brigade had to retreat from ‘the clash of spears,’ terribly shattered, having suffered 41.4 percent casualties in killed, wounded, and missing. As General Lee remarked after the war, ‘Never were men so brave.’

Organized in 1861 shortly after First Bull Run, the brigade’s nucleus was the 63d, 69th, and 88th New York Infantry. In the fall of 1862 the 28th Massachusetts and the 116th Pennsylvania were added, and the 29th Massachusetts served with it for a short time. It saw action in the Peninsular Campaign, at Antietam, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Cedar Run, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, in the 1st Division of the II Corps. Reorganized in November 1864, with the 7th New York Heavy Artillery replacing the 116th Pennsylvania, it was by then no longer the old organization and certainly could not be truthfully designated the Irish Brigade. It had suffered over 4,000 casualties in killed and wounded, a total which exceeded the number of men enrolled in it at any given time.

Of the five men who commanded the Irish Brigade, three were killed and the other two wounded. Colonel Richard Byrne was mortally wounded at Cold Harbor; Colonel Patrick Kelly was killed at Petersburg; Major General Thomas A. Smyth died at Farmville; and Brigadier Generals Robert Nugent and Thomas Meagher were both wounded.

The most colorful and flamboyant of its leaders was the original commander and organizer, General Thomas Francis Meagher. Born in County Waterford, Ireland in 1823, he was described as ‘the counterpart of some rash, impolitic, poetic personage from Irish poetry or fiction.’ Son of a wealthy merchant, he was an active disciple of Irish liberty and participated in the various independence movements. In 1845 the British exiled him to Tasmania. Three years later he escaped and eventually made his way to New York City. At various times a lawyer, lecturer, newspaper editor, and politician, his flaming oratory had made him a favorite of the ‘Young Ireland’ group and he soon became the political leader of the Irish element in New York. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised a Zouave company and commanded it at First Bull Run as part of the 69th New York State Militia. That winter he organized the Irish Brigade and President Lincoln appointed him brigadier general of Volunteers in February 1862.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts

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