IRISH
140
IRISH
fence of the Union. There are no statistics showing
the full percentage of the Irish element in the Federal
service in that war, hut that it constituted a very large
proportion there can be nu doubt. .\ table p\iblisheil
by C.G. Lee of Washington, an authority on the statis-
tics of the Civil War, shows the enlistment in the I'nion
Army of 144,200 men of Irish l)irth. E). P. Conyng-
ham, the historian of the Irish Brigade, estimates the
number of Irishmen so enlisted at 175,000 (see "The
Irish Brigade and its Campaigns", p. 8). But these
figures very inadequately represent the part taken by
Irishmen and their descendants in the defence of the
Union. In the analysis of the nationality of 337,800
soldiers from the State of New York, compiled by
B. A. Gould, Actuary of the U. S. Sanitary Commis-
sion (see "New York in the War of the Rebellion",
p. 49, by Frederick Pliisterer, late Captain of the U. S.
Army), the race or nationality by birth of 230,267 of
them was obtained by official records and, estimating
from these, it was found that of such total number of
soldiers supplied from that state there were: —
Natives of the United States 203,622
Of foreign birth 134,178
the latter being divided as follows: —
Natives of Ireland 51,206
Natives of Germany 36,680
Natives of British America 19,985
Natives of England 14,024
Natives of other foreign countries 12,283
134,178
Of those registered as natives of the United States, it is safe to assert that a large part was made up of sons of Irish parents and, judging from the history of Cana- dian immigration, that tJbe number credited to British America included many others, sons of Irish emigrants to Canada who, later, had taken up their residence in the United States. In view of the great extent of the Irish element already present in the population regis- tered as native-born, as before indicated, it can hardly be questioned but that at least one-fourth of the sol- diers so recorded were descendants of Irish immigrants. If to these we add only a fraction of those registered as natives of British America, sons of Irish emigrants who had landed in Canada before taking up residence in the United States, the Irish race would appear to have furnished about one-tliird of the entire quota of soldiers supplied by the State of New York in defence of the Union. But the troops from other states, not- ably Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Penn- sylvania, and Ilhnois, included in each case a large con- tingent of soldiers of Irish birth or descent, whose num- ber may fairly be estimated as between one-third and one-fourth of the total number of troops supplied by those .several states. Not a few regiments were com- posed almost exclusively of men of Irish birth or Irish descent, such as the 9th and 28th Massachusetts Volun- teers under command of Colonel (kahili and Colonel Richard Byrnes respectively, and later under Col. Thomas Cass (who fell at Malvern Hill), and Col. Patrick Guiney; the S8th New York Volunteers un- der Colonel Patrick Kelly, and the 69th of the same state which assembled under the order of their colo- nel, Michijel Corcoran, bidding his men "to rally to the support of the Constitution and laws of the United States" — a sentiment which was the inspira- tion of the subsequent outpouring of Irish soldiers in defence of the Union: the 116th Pennsylvania Volun- teers, recruited in Philadelphia, and later forming part of Meagher's Irish brigade, which went to the front in command of Colonel Dennis Ileenan; the 37th N.Y. (Irish Rifles); and .Meagher's Zouaves imder the command of 'i'hoirias l\ Meagher.
At the very outset of the war an Irish brigade made up of aliout 201)0 Catholic Irishmen was or- ganized in Chicago by Colonel .lames A. Mulligan, who
after four years of hard service fell mortally wounded
in one of the engagements at Winchester, Va. An
Irish legion, composed almost exclusively of Irish
Catholic soldiers, was mustered into service as the
90th Illinois Volunteers, recruited largely through the
exertions of an Irish priest. Father Dunn, and was
one of the first regiments to respond to the presi-
dent's call for troops. The first fortification thrown
up for the defence of Washington was Fort Corcoran,
on Arlington Heights, built by the men of the New
York 69th Regiment. When the ranks of these regi-
ments had l^een thinned by death or by disabiUty
from wounds or disease, they were filled with fresh
volunteers, many of them being immigrants only re-
cently arrived from Ireland. One of these, the 69th
of New York, was thus recruited thrice during the
war. Besitles these entire regiments of Irish soldiers,
there were many regiments from the different states,
each containing one or more companies composed ex-
clusively of Irishmen. Later the Irish Brigade of
New York was organized under the command of
General Thomas F. Meagher with the 69th as its
nucleus, the 63rd and S8th regiments of New York
being added, numbering in all over 2500 men. An-
other Irish legion, better known as the Corcoran
Legion, comprising four full regiments, namelv, the
69th, 155th, 164th, and 170th, was organized iii 1862
by General Michael Corcoran upon his return to New
York after a year's confinement in a Confederate war
prison, Irish priests, among them Rev. (now Arch-
bishop) John Ireland, Bernard O'Reilly, Lawrence S.
McMahon, afterwards Bishop of Hartford, Wilham
Corby, Thomas J. Mooney, James Dillon, John
Scully, Daniel Mullen, Philip Sheridan, Paul Gillen,
Edward McKee, and others, accompanied the Irish
regiments as chaplains, sharing the hardships of war
with them. To recount the deeds of the Irish soldiers
in that war would be to write a history of most of
its important battles. At Antietam, Wilhamsburg,
Fair Oaks, Chickahorainy, Malvern Hill, Chancellors-
ville, Spottsylvania, Bull Run, Gettysburg, the
Wilderness, and Fredericksburg, the Irish soldier was
found in the fore-front of battle braving every danger
and unhesitatingly giving up life itself in defence of
the flag of his adopted country.
The official war records contain frequent acknowl- edgment of the valuable service rendered by the Irish regiments in these various battles, and distin- guished officers in both contending armies have testi- fied to the heroic conduct of the Irish soldier. There are no statistics to show the total number of men of Irish blood who in the various armies and during the four years of struggle gave their li\es in defence of their country, but it was uncjuestionably vi-rv great. At Fredericksburg alone, in the memorable attack on Marye's Heights, the Irish Brigatle was so depleted that after the battle the numlier of men remaining alive was so small that not enough were left for a general to command, and General Meagher, their commander, thereupon resigned his commission (see "The Irish Brigade", pp. .349, 350, 366). According to the statistics, over 4000 men of the brigade and legion lost their lives on the field of battle, or of wounds re- ceived, or disease contracted in the service. The 69th New York lost 99S men during the war. At Antietam, out of 18 officers and 210 men engaged, it lost in killed and wounded 16 officers and 112 men. The Irish Legion lost 3100 in killed and wounded, in- cluding officers and men. Out of 1703 men enlisted in the Irish 2Sth of Massachusetts from its organiza- tion to the close of service, the killed, wounded, and missing in action reached the large number of 1133, of whom 408 were killed or wouniied in the campaign of the Wilderness (The Irish Brigaiie, p. 586). And the last Union general killed in the war was the Irish General Thomas H. Smith, who fell at Petersburg in April, 1865.
