IRISH
141
IRISH
Space does not permit an enumeration of all the
names of men of Irish blood who held responsible
command in the Union armies in that war. Some
of the generals were Logan, Lalor, and Dougherty of
Illinois, Gorman of Minnesota, Magenis and Sullivan
of Indiana. Reilly and Mulligan of Ohio, Stevenson
of Missouri, and with him James Shields, already a
hero of two wars and United States Senator from
three states, Shirley of Michigan, Smith of Delaware,
Meagher, Corcoran, Patrick H. O'Rourke, P. H.
Jones, and Thomas F. Sweeney of New York, George
G. Meade, Geary, and Birney of Pennsylvania, Mc-
Pherson, McDowell, and McCook, the dashing Phil
Kearney, and George B. McClellan. It was another
Irishman's son, "little" Phil Sheridan, the greatest
cavalry leader of the war, whose brilliant work just
preceding the surrender at Appomattox undoubtedly
contriliuted greatly to that result. When hostilities
ceased, Sheridan as lieutenant-general occupied next
to the highest rank in the military service of the
country, while at the same time the highest command
in the navy was held by Admiral Porter, the descend-
ant fif an Irishman, the next highest command being
helil by Aihnira! Rowan, a native-born Irishman.
While men of the Irish race were engaged on the battle-field in the defence of their adopted country, accompanied and encouraged by their clergy, the re- ligious orders of women mthin the Church were no less diligent in nursing the sick and wounded in the camps and hospitals. Among these volunteer nurses it is no exaggeration to say that the Irish element predominated. Thus in July, 1S62, at the request of the Secretary of War, a band of seven Sisters of Mercy left New York and took charge of the Soldiers' Hospital at Beaufort, N. C, which was later on transferred to Newbern. This was in charge of Mother Augustine McKenna, a native of County Monaghan, Ireland. Several of these, exhausted by the hardships incident to their work, gave up their lives only to be replaced by others from their com- mimity in New Y'ork. The hospital at Jefferson Cit\-. Mo., was put in charge of another company of nims from the same order who came from their home in Chicago, and when this institution had to be abandoned, they took charge of the hospital depart- ment of the steamboat "Empress", which was about to start for the battle-field of Shiloh. These Chicago sisters were in charge of Mother Alphonsus Butler, and Confederate and Union soldiers alternately came under their care (see "Annals of the Sisters of Mercy", III, 279, 284). The Stanton and Doug- las military hospitals were placed in charge of the same sisters. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul sent from Emmitsburg and other houses many of their members, whose ministrations in the hospitals at Norfolk and elsewhere elicited the grate- ful admiration of Protestant and Catholic alike.
The Hospital of the Good Samaritan at Cincinnati was the gift of some enlightened and appreciative Protestant gentlemen to Sister Anthony, born at Limerick, whose services in the field hospitals had won for her the title of " Ministering Angel of the Army of the Tennessee " (see Maguire, " Irish in America", p. 482). The earliest use of the Mercy Hospital at Pittsburg, established by Irish Sisters of Mercy, was for the relief of the sick and disabled soldiers returning from the Mexican War, 1S4S. At Helena and Little Rock, Ark., hospitals were main- tainetl by the same community, who served the sick and wouniled, now of the Union, next of the Con- federate, forces, as the fortunes of war shifted the control of the territory in which the hospital stood. There were Irish women in the community of the Sisters of St. Joseph who served at Harrisburg, caring for the disabled soldiers and taking charge of the floating hospitals that received the wounded from the Virginia battle-fields. The same community
afterwards (1S64) opened and maintained an asylum
at Philadelphia for the orphaned daughters of the
Union soldiers of the Civil War (Hist. Sketch of
Church in Philadelphia, p. 193), and all over the
country the orphans, made such by the war, found
shelter under the hospitable roofs of one or other
of the religious communities, whose members were
largely of the Irish race.
■The record of the services rendered by the Irish in that war would be incomplete without reference to the part taken by John Hughes, the great Irish Arch- bishop of New Y'ork. This distinguished prelate, the friend of President Abraham Lincoln and of his sec- retary of State, William H. Seward, undertook at their request a confidential mission to Europe in Lsiil, where at the French Court and in other influential circles he advocated the justice of the conduct of the Government at W'ashington in resisting the secession of the states and the consequent disruption of the LTnion. At that time the British Government and Enghsh public men with few notable exceptions had manifested their hostility to the Government, as they continued to do afterwards, and efforts were being made (as was believed) to engage France in an alliance with England with a view to their joint acknowledg- ment of the Southern States as an independent nation. This would have entitled the Confctlcracy to all the rights of a belligerent, and woukl Iwve permitted England to become its ally openly and to furnish troops and supplies in support of the rebellion. But the efforts in question failed, and the Government gratefully acknowledged the patriotic services per- formed by Archbishop Hughes in that behalf.
But the genius of the Irish race, which had thus helped to found the Republic and to preserve it when it needed defenders, was not lacking in times of peace in the development of the country and in the practice of the arts and sciences. One of the greatest enter- prises of the last century and the one which contrib- uted most to the supremacy of the State of New York, namely, the construction of the Erie Canal, was planned and carried out during the year 1817-18 by De Witt Clinton, then governor of that state, who was a descendant of Charles Clinton, himself an immi- grant, born at Longford, Ireland, as already noted. But this great enterprise had already, as early as 1784, been publicly advocated by another Irish immigrant, Christopher CoUes, then living in the city of New York, who had been an engineer and instructor in the Con- tinental Army. With almost prophetic foresight, the same Irish immigrant proposed a system of water sup- ply for New York City by means of aqueducts, models of which he publicly exhibited, thus anticipating by more than half a century the existing Croton aqueduct system, .\nother Irishman's son, James Sullivan, Governor of Massachusetts, projected the Middlesex (Mass.) Canal. It is a well-known fact that the actual work of construction of the railroads and canals dur- ing the greater part of the last century was accom- plished mainly by Irish hands and Irish energy. In the higher plane of railroad operation Irish talent and ability have been constantly in evidence, and in the honest and successful administration of the affairs of a railroad system, no name stands higher than that of the late Samuel Sloan, an emigrant from the north of Ireland. An Irish surveyor, Ja.sper O'Farrell, laid out the city of San Francisco. Among the California pioneers (1828) there were Irish Martins, Sullivans, and Murphys, including Don Timothoo Mvirphy, who had livetl two years in Peru anti who with O'Farrell gave the land on which the first orphan asylum in San Francisco was built. In later days the Floods, Fairs, antl O'Briens are associated with the successful development of the great mining industries of that state, while Eugene Kelly, another Catholic Irishman of San Francisco and New York, stands out as a type of the successful merchant antl banker.
