The Irish Brigade

As the threat of civil war loomed over the nation, Thomas Francis Meagher joined the 69th New York State Militia. This was a ninety-day regiment that first saw action at First Bull Run and was under the command of Colonel Michael Corcoran. The colonel was captured and spent more than a year in a Confederate prison. When the ninety-day enlistment expired, Captain Meagher returned, with his regiment to New York.

Shortly after his return, Meagher began raising a unit of Irish volunteers to serve for a term of three years. This unit would eventually become the 63rd, 69th and 88th New York Voluntary Infantry Regiments. The 69th and 88th regiments were organized at Throgs Neck, New York and enlistments primarily occurred between early September through mid-November, 1861. The 63rd New York was organized at Staten Island, New York. Meagher was appointed brigadier general and took command of the Irish Brigade on February 5, 1862. During the spring of 1862 a non-Irish regiment, the 29th Massachusetts was added to strengthen the Brigade during the Peninsula Campaign.

In October, 1862, the men of the 116th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment joined the ranks of the brigade. Composed primarily of Irishmen from Philadelphia they were organized at Camp Emitt and joined the brigade at Harper's Ferry. One month later, in November, 1862, the 29th Massachusetts was traded for another Irish regiment, the 28th Massachusetts. This regiment was organized at Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 13, 1861.

The brigade was assigned to General Edwin V. Sumner's Division, Army of the Potomac. In March of 1862, the brigade became the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division, 2nd Army Corps.

Throughout its life in the Army of the Potomac, the Irish Brigade was almost always at the foremost position and suffered high casualties as a result. Such was the case at the "Bloody Lane" at Antietem, below Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, the battle in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg and at Chancellorsville. Efforts were made after the Chancellorsville battle to disband the brigade. General Meagher protested this action and resigned his commission on May 14, 1863. Though his resignation was later cancelled, he never again served in the field with the Irish Brigade.

Though the brigade continued to distinguish itself on the battlefields, increasing casualties forced changes within the brigade. By June, 1864, the brigade had been reduced to that of nearly regimental size. The brigade was officially disbanded in June, 1864, with the 116th Pennsylvania being made part of the 2nd Corps, 1st Division, 4th Brigade, in July. The three New York regiments now comprised the 3rd Brigade. Later in the year, the Second Irish Brigade was created, comprising of the 63rd, 69th, 88th New York, the 28th Massachusetts and the 7th New York Heavy Artillery. The 7th New York was then replaced by the 4th New York Heavy Artillery in the early part of 1865. During its almost four years of service, the Irish Brigade lost more than 4,000 officers and men, more than which served within the brigade at any one time. Though Richard Byrnes, Richard Duryes, Patrick Kelly, Robert Nugent and Thomas Smyth held temporary commands at various times through the brigade's existence, Thomas Francis Meagher served as the brigade's only commanding general.

COLONEL SAINT CLAIR A. MULHOLLAND
Commanding Officer
116th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Saint Clair Augustine Mulholland was born on April 1, 1839 in Lisburn, Ireland. He immigrated to the United State in 1846 with his parents first settling in New Jersey and then moving to Philadelphia in 1850 where he remained, apart from his numerous travels, the rest of his life. Though he worked in a printing shop and then as a painter of window shades Mulholland showed an early interest in military life. Prior to the Civil War he was active in the Pennsylvania militia, where he became an expert drill instructor. During the early days of the war Mulholland sought to recruit men for a unit to be attached to the Irish Brigade. Though this was initially unsuccessful, Mulholland did recruit two companies of men for a regiment that would become the 116th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He started as a lieutenant in June, 1862, but because of his military experience and recruiting skill, he was mustered in as lieutenant-colonel of the 116th when it entered Federal service on September 1, 1862.

Colonel Dennis Heenan and Mulholland were both Irish born, and both had been active in Irish militia units before the war and both had attempted to raise Irish regiments for Federal service in its first year. Though the 116th Infantry was not entirely composed of Irishmen they were far more numerous than any other foreign-born element in the 116th. Because of this stature, the 116th Pennsylvania Volunteers joined General Thomas Francis Meagher's Irish Brigade at Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 9, 1862. This brigade was composed of the 63rd, 69th and 88th New York and the 29th Massachusetts regiments. By the fall of 1862 the 29th Massachusetts had been replaced by the all-Irish 28th Massachusetts and gave the Irish Brigade the strength that Meagher had originally hoped for.

The 116th Pennsylvania shared in all of the brigades fights from October, 1862 until June, 1864, when the brigade left the regiment. The 116th Pennsylvania always enjoyed a good relationship with the Irish Brigade and was loath to leave it in 1864. When Colonel Heenan fell wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Mulholland took command of the regiment and held it until late 1864 when he was given command of his own brigade.

Colonel Mulholland performances proved what kind of officer he was. Though he was wounded at Fredericksburg and being able to walk only with the assistance of a cane, he returned to camp to share the hardships with his men in the field in 1863. A report in the New York Irish-American written by one of his own men stated that under his leadership "every officer and soldier would charge to the cannon's mouth." Mulholland impressed both soldier and senior officer alike and was a personal favorite of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, whose friendship led to a lifelong relationship.

At the Battle of Chancellorsville on the night of May 4, 1863, General Hancock looked for an officer he could depend upon to protect the army in a rear-guard action. He chose his friend Lieutenant Colonel Mulholland. Hancock fully expected that these men would be captured and told Mulholland that he would try to exchange him at the earliest opportunity if captured. Mulholland accepted the risk and with 400 men he was able to protect the army's retreat and did escape capture and brought back almost all of his men across the river before they could be cut off by the advancing Rebel forces. Mulholland heroism was rewarded with the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In early 1864 General Hancock gave Lieutenant Colonel Mulholland the opportunity to return to Philadelphia to recruit enough men to bring the 116th Pennsylvania back to full strength. With this accomplished, Mulholland was promoted to colonel to lead the restored 116th into the summer campaigns. Before the end of the year Hancock saw to it that Mulholland was given command of his own brigade: the fourth brigade of the first division of Hancock's Second Corps. As brigade commander Mulholland was again singled out on two different occasions in actions at Petersburg, Virginia. After the war, and upon Hancock's recommendation, Mulholland was brevetted brigadier general and major general for his distinguished service during the war.

Listed below are the skirmishes, battles and campaigns of the Union Army's "Irish Brigade" during the war. The dates indicated are the days that these actions commenced. Several of the battles and campaigns lasted well over a day, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, the Spotsylvania and Petersburg campaigns and the road to Appomattox Court House.

The Irish Brigade was, probably, the best known of any brigade organization, it having made an unusual reputation for dash and gallantry. The remarkable precision of its evolutions under fire ; its desperate attack on the impregnable wall at Marye's Heights; its never failing promptness on every field; and its long continuous service, made for it a name inseparable from the history of the war. It belonged to the First Division of the Second Corps, and was numbered as the Second Brigade. The regiments which properly belonged to the Irish Brigade, together with their losses, were:

W        63rd New York Infantry 156
W        69th New York Infantry 259
W        88th New York Infantry 151
W        28th Massachusetts Infantry 250
W        116th Pennsylvania Infantry 145

The Irish Brigade lost over 4,000 men in killed and wounded; it being more men than ever belonged to the brigade at any one time. With the exception of the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts, the regiments were small. At the start they were not recruited to the maximum, but left New York with about 800 men each. The three New York regiments became so reduced in numbers that, at Gettysburg, they were consolidated into two companies each; the One Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania had been consolidated into four companies.

The brigade, which was organized in 1861, consisted originally of three New York regiments, which selected numbers corresponding to those of certain famous Irish regiments in the British Army. The One Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania and Twenty-eighth Massachusetts were added in the fall of 1862. Each of the five regiments carried green flags, in addition to the national colors. While on the Peninsular and Antietem campaigns, the Twenty-Ninth Massachusetts was attached to the brigade, but after Antietem it was detached and its place was taken by the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts. In September, 1864, the remnant of the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery was added; but it was detached in February, 1865, and the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery took its place. In July, 1864, the One Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania was transferred to the Fourth Brigade. But the Irish Brigade was composed, substantially, as above; and, each of the regiments having reenlisted, its service was continuous and unbroken. It was commanded, in turn, by General Thomas Francis Meagher, Colonel Patrick Kelly (killed), General Thos. A. Smyth (killed), Colonel Richard Byrnes (killed), and General Robert Nugent.

The formation of an Irish Brigade was authorized by the United States Secretary of War in September 1861. The brigade originally consisted of the 69th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the 63rd New York, and the 88th New York. In the fall of that year the 116th Pennsylvania Infantry & 28th Massachusetts Infantry regiment joined the Irish brigade, giving it its desired complement of five regiments. The mostly non-Irish 29th Massachusetts Infantry regiment had a short stint with the Irish Brigade in 1862.

The core regiment of the Irish Brigade, the 69th New York Volunteers, was comprised largely from the 69th New York Militia, a unit which first gained notoriety prior to the Civil War, when Colonel Michael Corcoran refused an order to parade the regiment for Edward VII during the latter's visit to New York City.

Col. Corcoran was in the process of being court-martialed when the Civil War erupted. Needing as many men at arms as quickly as possible, the Army dropped the charges and rushed the 69th to Virginia.

At the Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), the regiment served under the command of Colonel William T. Sherman, and was one of the few Union regiments to retain cohesion after the defeat, despite the wounding and capture of Col. Corcoran by Confederate forces. The 69th served as the Army of the Potomac's rear guard during the disorganized retreat to the defenses of Washington, D.C.

After Bull Run, the Captain of Company K (Thomas Francis Meagher) applied to have the 69th New York Volunteer Militia reorganized into Federal service as the core unit of a larger brigade composed predominantly of Irish immigrants. Meagher was promoted to brigadier general and designated the brigade's commander. Before the war, he was a leading agitator for Irish independence from Britain. A visible participant in the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, he was afterwards tried and sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment in Australia, but he escaped to New York).

Formation of the ethnically based brigade served three Union purposes: 1 - It warned Britain (which appeared to be favoring the Confederacy if not deliberating entry into the conflict on their behalf) that there could be Union supported consequences in Ireland if Britain intervened (most of the brigade's membership were known Irish revolutionaries), and 2 - It served to solidify Irish-American support for the Union. The Irish were naturally predisposed to support the Confederacy due to their sympathy with the struggle for independence. They also didn't want a flood of freed slaves to migrate north and compete for the lowly jobs for which they already had to scrabble. 3 - It solidified the support of the Catholic minority for the Union cause. Having their own paid Catholic Chaplain implied a social acceptance for Irish Catholics which had eluded them in the antebellum period. Their chaplain was Father William Corby, CSC, a Congregation of Holy Cross priest and future president of the University of Notre Dame. He became famous for his giving absolution to the troops of the Irish Brigade before the Battle of Gettysburg.

Before the full five regiments of a typical brigade could be raised, the unit was called to combat. In March 1862 the brigade, composed of the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York regiments, was assigned to Major General Edwin V. Sumner's division in the Army of the Potomac as the 2nd Brigade and shipped to the Virginia Peninsula. While the Army of the Potomac crept slowly toward Richmond, Virginia, a fourth regiment joined the brigade: the 29th Massachusetts, a regiment formed mainly of Puritan descendants. Massachusetts had pledged to provide an Irish regiment, intending to send the 28th Massachusetts, but that Irish regiment was not complete when the Army of the Potomac went into action. Instead, the next available unit, the 29th Massachusetts, was sent.

Despite their divergent backgrounds, the 29th Massachusetts and the rest of the brigade fought well together, earning plaudits for hard campaigning during the Seven Days Battles; most notably at Battle of Savage's Station, Battle of Glendale, and Battle of Malvern Hill. After Malvern Hill, the Army of the Potomac languished at Harrison's Landing on the Peninsula and Meagher gained permission to recruit in New York to replenish the brigade's losses. While other units were transferred to northern Virginia during the summer of 1862 to fight under Gen. John Pope, the Irish Brigade remained on the Peninsula with Gen. George B. McClellan.

After Pope's complete rout at Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas), Gen. Robert E. Lee took the offensive, moving into Maryland. McClellan and the remainder of Army of the Potomac were rushed north. The brigade's new recruits, approximately a tenth the number that Meagher had hoped to raise, joined the unit at Tenleytown, Maryland, in time to march in pursuit of the Confederates.

On September 17th, 1862, the Union and Confederate armies met at Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the Battle of Antietem. Command confusion led to the disjointed use of the II Corps, and instead of supporting renewed assaults on the Confederate left at the West Woods, the Irish Brigade found itself facing the center of the Confederate line, entrenched in an old sunken farm road. The brigade again acted conspicuously, assaulting the road, referred to after the battle as "Bloody Lane". Although unsuccessful, the brigade's attack gave supporting troops enough time to flank and break the Confederate position, at the cost of 60% casualties for the Irish Brigade.

The brigade suffered its most severe casualties in December at the Battle of Fredericksburg where its fighting force was reduced from over 1600 to 256. The brigade was involved in the northern battleground at Fredericksburg where they assaulted the sunken road in front of Marye's Heights. Ironically, one of the regiments manning the sunken road defenses was a predominantly Irish Regiment commanded by Gen. Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb. Knowing that Cobb's men manned the wall, and that both Cobb's and Meagher's units contained members of the Fenian Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to gaining military experience in the United States, then freeing Ireland from Britain after the Civil War, Lee ordered reserves sent to the position. He need not have worried. Cobb's men helped decimate the Irish Brigade before the reinforcements could settle in place. It was at Fredericksburg that Lee allegedly referred to Meagher's regiment as the "Fighting 69th".

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gen. Meagher again requested to recruit the brigade back to strength. This time the request was denied. In May 1863, the brigade sustained further casualties at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Meagher repeated his request to recruit replacements, was denied, and resigned his commission in protest. Meagher was replaced by Col. Patrick Kelly.

Leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg, the brigade recovered several hundred of its injured at Fredericksburg and was able to field nearly 600 men. At Gettysburg, the brigade distinguished itself in the Wheatfield under the command of Col. Kelly as the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division (Brigadier General John C. Caldwell) of the II Corps (Major General Winfield S. Hancock). The brigade has a monument on the Loop on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

While continuing to serve with distinction, casualties continued to increase and by June 1864 the Irish Brigade had been reduced to regimental size. The U.S. Army disbanded it and incorporated the remaining elements of the brigade into the 3rd and 4th Brigades of the 1st Division, II Corps.

A Second Irish Brigade was reformed from the old Irish Brigade of the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York, 116th Pennsylvania, and 28th Massachusetts Regiments as well as the addition of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery (later replaced by the 4th New York Heavy Artillery in early 1865).

There is perhaps no other ethnic group so closely identified with the Civil War years and the immediate aftermath of the war as Irish Americans.

Of those Irish who came over much later than the founding generations, fully' 150,000 of them joined the Union army. Unfortunately, statistics for the Confederacy are sketchy at best; still, one has but to listen to the Southern accent, and listen to the sorts of tunes Southern soldiers loved to sing, to realize that a great deal of the South was settled by Irish immigrants. But because the white population of the Confederate states was more native-born than immigrant during the Civil War years, there did not seem as much of a drive in the Southern army to recognize heritage in the names and uniforms of regiments as there was in the Union forces.

In the Federal army there was the fabled Meagher's Irish brigade, led by the flamboyant Thomas Meagher; they went into battle with an emerald green flag with a large golden harp in its center, celebrating their heritage even in the midst of death.

In the North, centers of Irish settlement were Boston and New York, both of which had sizeable Irish neighborhoods. There were major immigration periods in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s; the numbers steadily increased until, according to the 1860 census, well over one and a half million Americans claimed to have been born in Ireland. The majority of these lived in the North. There were periods of severe economic difficulties both before and after the war when the immigrant Irish were singled out for the distrust and hatred of their fellow Americans; "No Irish Need Apply" was a frequently seen placard sign above the doors of factories, shops, warehouses, and farms.

The Irish were chiefly distrusted because they were Catholic, and there was much opposition in the United States to the Church of Rome. The frustration this prejudice caused led indirectly to the boil-over of tempers in July 1863, when the first official draft was held; a mob of mostly immigrant laborers gathered at the site of the draft lottery, and as names were called and those not wealthy enough to purchase a substitute were required to join up, the mob's temper flared. The situation escalated into full-scale rioting; for three days, cities like New York and Boston were caught up in a rampage of looting, burning, and destruction. Many of the rioters were frustrated Irish laborers who could not get jobs, and their targets were draft officials, as well as free blacks living in the North, who seemed able to get jobs that the Irish were denied. it took the return of armed troops from the fighting at Gettysburg to bring the cities back to peace and quiet.

Such events did little to help the image of the Irish in America, until many years after the war. Despite their wartime heroics, many Irish veterans came home to find the same ugly bias they faced before going off to fight for the Union. Many of them chose to go into the post war army. Still others followed Thomas Meagher into Canada, where they joined up in an attempt to free Canada from British domination. Many simply chose to remain in the Eastern cities; hoping matters would improve as time went by. Eventually things did get better for the Irish, but it was many long years before ugly anti-Irish prejudice faded.