The Irish Brigade

Happy St. Patricks's Day! Beyond the plastic green hats and Guinness, here's a nod to the Irish Brigade, the military heroism of the Irish, from the early days of mass Irish immigration.

Here at Antietam on 17 September 1862, the Irish Brigade of the formed a line on a sunken road along an edge of a cornfield, filling a crucial gap in the Union Army's lines. A Catholic chaplain rode along the line giving absolution to the troops, who knew they were about to face the onslaught of a Confederate frontal attack aimed to exploit the gap. Under withering fire - both sides exchanging volleys at 300 paces - the Irishmen charged the attacking Confederates with fixed bayonets, in a crashing, cataclysmic collision. At just 30 paces, they unloaded "buck and ball" musket shot into the Confederates, who were surging forward from their previous gains at the Bloody Angle. Col. Meagher, the Irish Brigade commander, had uniquely insisted on arming the Irish volunteers with obsolete smoothbore muskets - eschewing rifled muskets that were standard by the time. His thought was that his troops would be engaging in close combat throughout in the war, and smoothbores enabled them to fire a .69 caliber musket ball plus four smaller balls, for a shotgun effect. While it generally disadvantaged the Irish Brigade by giving them far shorter effective firing range than the enemy, on this day the "buck and ball" at close quarters ripped through the Confederates, and the bayonet charge sent the North Carolinians reeling back, checking the Confederate advance and saving the line.

The Irish Brigade regiments at Antietam were the "Fighting 69th," 63rd and 88th regiment of New York Volunteers, almost all Irish immigrants. In order of battle formally known as the Second Brigade, First Division, the brigade's fourth regiment was the 29th Massachusetts, a "Yankee" unit not keen of being joined with 3 purely Irish Catholic "Fenian" regiments - most of the Irish regimental leadership were known, exiled Irish revolutionaries. While they fought well with the Irishmen, after the Battle of Antietam the 29th Massachusetts was replaced by the 28th Massachusetts and later the 116th Pennsylvania, also predominantly Irish immigrants.

Forming an ethnically-based brigade had it doubters in the north, well prior to the formation of Black regiments, as it seemed opposite to the notion of Union. The apt analogy to the Irish Brigade, given comparable historic levels of immigration, is if the US Army formed a Hispanic brigade today. But the Irish Brigade served several purposes.?

First, soldiers were needed, the rapidly growing Irish diaspora could provide that - tough, hardscrabble immigrants, many veterans of uprisings against the British. Second, it discouraged Britain from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy, as the Union would have a ready supply of veteran Irish revolutionaries that could cause problems if landed in Ireland. Third, it rallied the Irish -the largest Catholic minority in the nation - to the Union cause. There had been some concern about that. The Irish in particular, and Catholics in general, were highly discriminated against - the Irish forming the lowest level of working class society in the industrializing north, akin to free Blacks. In fact they competed for jobs with free Blacks, so slave emancipation was not a motivation as it was for some Yankees and Republicans. So forming an all-Irish brigade, uniquely with their own Catholic chaplains, was a point of pride, patriotism, even acceptance into American society that helped swing the Irish, a huge population in cities like New York, to the Union cause.?

While not nearly as numerous, the Confederate Army itself fielded some Irish units. The only regiment-sized CSA formation was the 10th Tennessee, but the famous Louisiana Tigers, a highly effective battalion-sized unit of shock troops, was drawn in large part from the Irish dockworkers of New Orleans. (The Tigers also eventually being the source of LSU collegiate nickname.)

Formed from a New York militia that had famously refused to parade for the Prince of Wales when he visited New York City prior to the war, the Fighting 69th was one of the first Union regiments, in colorful Zouave uniforms, rushed into the war. By 1862 it had already proven itself in battle. At the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run), a grave defeat for the Union which set the tone for a long, bloody war, the 69th was one of the few Union formations to retain unit cohesion. It also fought well in the Peninsula campaign. Before Antietam its latest commander, Col. Meagher, a veteran of the 1848 Young Irelander rebellion against Britain and then exiled by the British to Tasmania (from which he escaped to America,) had convinced the Lincoln administration of the wisdom of forming an all-Irish brigade.

The Irish Brigade suffered 540 casualties that day at Antietam, 113 of whom lay dead on the cornfield, including several senior officers. It went on to other battles, notably Fredericksburg where it suffered horrific losses in a brave, hopeless frontal assault upon impregnable Confederate positions on Marye's Heights. Fredericksburg decimated the brigade. Basically reduced to a regiment in size though it retained the brigade designation, it then helped repulse the Confederate flanking assault in the brutal, chaotic Wheatfield fight on the second day of Gettysburg in 1863. The Irish Brigade was reduced further in strength, but soldiered on through the butchery of Cold Harbor and then the siege Petersburg in 1864, after which it was disbanded as a brigade because of losses and absorbed into other units.

In all, the Irish Brigade lost 4,000 soldiers in the Civil War, more than those who served in the brigade at any given time. 11 brigade members earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. Of the 5 officers who commanded the brigade, 3 were killed or mortally wounded. The Irish Brigade suffered more combat dead than any other Union brigade other than the 1st Vermont and the similarly famous Iron Brigade - crack troops from Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana who withstood the decimating Confederate assault on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg.

The Irish Brigade was a key element in the acceptance and appreciation of Irish citizens in America. Though drunken revelry seems to be the code of St. Patrick's Day today, it's also important to look back to the history, contributions and service of the Irish in America.?

éirinn go Brách!

(My maternal side were O'Hares, from County Armagh)