Originally aired on April 04, 1997 - In part 136 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that at least 20 Union regiments were all Irishmen, and their presence in camp and battle was always evident.
#136 – Irish Soldiers
In August 1861, with the Civil War barely four months old, a Union sergeant wrote from camp: “Colonel Stevenson with his command, the 7th Missouri, or as it is called, the ‘Missouri Irish Brigade’, arrived here yesterday….It is said that there are 800 men and the first day they came here there were 900 fights.”
An estimated one of every four Union soldiers was foreign-born. This should not be surprising if one remembers that a third of the Northern population at the outset of civil war were immigrants of first or second generation. The most numerous of the nationalities in the Union armies were Germans. Yet a close second in number were the Irishmen, whose presence in camp or battle was always evident.
Of all ethnic groups in the North in 1861, the Irish probably were the strongest in their feelings against the freeing of slaves. Emancipation, they felt, might result in blacks flooding the North and becoming economic competitors and even the social equals of Irish laborers on farms and in factories. Certainly it is a paradox to find Irishmen, who bitterly denounced the bondage upon Ireland by England, massed in solid opposition to granting freedom to American slaves. Yet when war became stern reality, Irishmen forgot their racial feelings and flocked to enlist.
They were not going to see a country in which they had travelled halfway around the world to call their own torn asunder by Southern upstarts. At least twenty Union regiments were all –Irish. Many carried the green flag of the old homeland into battle. Among these units were the 9th and 28th Massachusetts, 9th Connecticut, 3rd New Hampshire, and 11th Wisconsin. However, New York became the principal donor for Irish soldiers.
General Thomas Francis Meagher’s Irish Brigade, consisting of the 9th, 63rd and 88th New York, was probably the best-known all-Irish unit. On the other hand, the 69th New York, also Irish, carved a distinctive mark for gallantry first in the Civil War and 50 years later in World War I. (A Hollywood movie starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien immortalized the 69th on the battlefields of France.)
Irishmen in the 1860s acquired equal reputations for valor and trouble-making. An example of the latter occurred in July, 1863, at Vicksburg, Mississippi. An Indiana officer noted: “The 90th Illinois, the Irish regiment, came into camp just back of us this morning. And such a time as those fellows did have. They got into a row about putting up their tents and had a free for all fight and were knocking each other over the head with pick handles, tent poles, or anything else they got hold of. Pretty soon their colonel, (O’Meara), came out of his tent with a great wide bladed broadsword…and the way he did bash those fellows with the flat of it was a caution. He stopped the row and they settled down. His Regiment adore him.”
Irish soldiers always had a reputation for courage and tenacity. Often in the Civil War, when desperate combat was imminent, commanders summoned their Irish units to the point of attack. They were never a disappointment.
A Union surgeon summarized the Irish Brigade at Antietam this way: “Other men go into fights finely, sternly, or indifferently, but the only man (who) really love it, after all, is the green, immortal Irishman.” At Antietam “the brave lads from the old sod…laughed and fought and joked as if (battle) were the finest fun in the world.”
Pugnacity and an excessive fondness for strong drink might make Irishmen troublesome at times, but their humor, courage, and dedication also made them some of the finest fighters this nation has ever had.