TONIGHT'S PRESENTATION:

June 4 - Hope Kamin on "Journalism in the Civil War."

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: Fall 2009

Sept. 10 - Jack Pike and Don Schurman on "Lee's Plan at Gettysburg"
Oct. 1 - Kieran McAuliffe on "Remembering Lincoln"
Nov. 5 - Ray Rawlings on "Reconstruction after the Civil War"
Dec. 3 - Don Coulter on "Southern Forts Along the South Coast"

The May 7, 2009 meeting of the Civil War Round Table of Greater Kingston featured a familiar guest speaker from Toronto, Kieran McAuliffe. Kieran has spoken to us on past occasions about such topics as Jedediah Hotchkiss, the Dahlgren/Kilpatrick Raid, and John Wilkes Booth's escape route (which he depicted in a richly detailed and informative map).

Tonight, Kieran's topic was the Irish Brigade, one of the most famous fighting units in the Army of the Potomac and one which was in the thick of the action in most of the bloodiest battles of the Eastern Theatre.

The Irish, like other Celtic peoples, have always been well known for their martial spirit. Indeed, over the centuries they have made a virtue of their anger management deficits and poor conflict resolution skills; hence, the name "Fighting Irish" often applied to them. Not content to confine their quarrels to their native soil, the Irish have often put their warlike talents at the disposal of foreign potentates.

There is scarcely an army in the world that does not have an Irishmen or two in its gallery of heroes of ages past. Kieran referred to the Irish regiments in the service of the French during the 18th century as one of the most notable such examples. These were the famous "Wild Geese" who, as Kieran explained, shipped out to the continent under bogus cargo manifests listing them as undomesticated waterfowl.

It has usually been some national calamity that has resulted in waves of Irish emigrants leaving their native shores to take up their lives in other lands, and in the mid-19th century it was the Potato Famine of 1847 that provided the impetus. Kieran informed us that about one million Irish arrived in the United States during the decades from 1820 to 1860, most of them as a result of the Great Hunger.

The Irish looked for ways of identifying themselves with their new country. Many of them, Kieran said, found an ideological home in the Democratic Party. Militia units were also popular avenues for male-bonding, and one of these, the 69th New York State Militia Regiment founded in 1851 and based in New York City, had earned an unofficial title as "The Fighting Irish" due to the number of Hibernians in its ranks. It was this regiment that was to form the nucleus of the Irish Brigade when the Civil War broke out in April 1861.

The commander of the 69th New York Militia Regiment was a stubborn and pugnacious character named Colonel Michael Corcoran, one of the founders of the Fenian Brotherhood. Kieran told the story of how Colonel Corcoran had refused to parade his men for inspection by the visiting Prince of Wales when that scion of the House of Saxe-Cobourg had paid a call to New York City in October of 1860. Colonel Corcoran was in the midst of being court-martialed for this act of insubordination when the military authorities decided that his brand of troublemaker might be of more utility stopping Confederate bullets than offending British royalty.

Thus, Colonel Corcoran was at the head of the 69th New York Volunteers when it went into battle at Bull Run on July 21, 1861 as part of a brigade commanded by Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman. The recruits were green in more sense than just being Irish, but they performed well and kept their cohesion better than most other Union regiments on the battlefield that day, an interesting fact considering the traditional reputation that Irish soldiers have for being undisciplined. The 69th formed part of the rearguard of the Army of the Potomac as it skedaddled back to Washington, a role that Kieran pointed out the Irish brigade would be called upon to perform on many other occasions over the next three years of fighting.

As for Colonel Corcoran, he was wounded during the battle and fell into Confederate hands. In keeping with his defiant temperament, he refused to be paroled and languished in a prisoner until finally exchanged in 1862. He went on to command an outfit called the Corcoran Legion, but his judgement was questioned when he shot a fellow Union officer who challenged him and demanded that he give the proper password while Corcoran was advancing to the frontlines after dark. Before he could do any more damage to his own side, Corcoran suffered a fractured skull and died in December 1863 when his horse-perhaps a secret British sympathizer-slipped and fell on him.

In the aftermath of the Bull Run debacle, the 69th New York regrouped and refitted. At this point, another colourful character stepped forward who would play a prominent role in the history of the Irish Brigade. This was Thomas Francis Meagher, a fiercely patriotic Irishman who had arrived in the United States in 1852 after a daring escape from a British penal colony in Tasmania, to which he had been transported because of his treasonous plotting against the British Crown during the 1848 revolutions in Europe.

Meagher was a popular figure among the New York Irish immigrant community as well as a company captain in the 69th New York. In the fall of 1861 he proposed to the military authorities that a brigade be formed consisting entirely of Irish recruits with his own 69th New York as its lead regiment. Accordingly, Meagher was commissioned a Brigadier General of Volunteers in February 1862 and the Irish Brigade came into being.

Originally organized as a five regiment brigade, Meagher's command comprised only three-the 69th, 63rd and 88th New York-when it was ordered into action once again in March of 1862 as part of General McClellan's Peninsular campaign. Here it was joined by a fourth regiment, the 29th Massachusetts and served as the Second Brigade of the First Division of General Edwin Sumner's II Corps.

The Irish Brigade lived up to expectations for its fighting abilities at Savage's Station, Glendale, and Malvern Hill. The men charged into action crying the old Gaelic battle-cry "Faugh a ballagh!" or "Clear the way!" The phrase could just as well have been applied as an advance warning for any entrance by Colonel Meagher, as observers noted that his liking for the bottle sometimes made him as great a threat to his own men as the enemy as he rode about drunkenly swinging his saber at all and sundry.

After the bloody battles of the Seven Days on the Peninsula, the Irish Brigade was obliged to replenish its numbers. But true sons of Ireland of suitable military age were now harder to find, and Colonel Meagher had to make do with the addition of the 28th Massachusetts and the 116th Pennsylvania to the brigade's strength. However, Kieran noted that these new men had no difficulty embracing the particular esprit de corps of the Irish Brigade.

Meanwhile, the Second Bull Run campaign was fought and lost by General John Pope in central Virginia. The Irish Brigade sat this one out on the Peninsula, but when Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia invaded Maryland, they were hurriedly shipped north to rejoin General George B. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. Near the banks of Antietam Creek on September 17, 1862 the Irish Brigade once more went into battle.

As Kieran made clear in his presentation, the Irish Brigade was pretty well bled white and fought to the edge of extinction during the campaigns and battles of 1862. At Antietam, for example, Meagher's troops lost about 540 men during their attacks on the Bloody Lane. A few months later, the Brigade numbered 1300 men at the start of the Fredericksburg campaign. These soldiers hurled themselves against the stone wall on Marye's Heights on the afternoon of December 13, 1862 until 545 of them were listed as killed, wounded, or missing.

The diminished Irish Brigade was in action again at the Battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863, where it suffered yet more casualties and helped form part of the rearguard of the defeated General Hooker's Army of the Potomac.

After the battle, Colonel Meagher was determined to recruit his brigade back to full strength. His plan was quashed by higher authorities, Kieran told us, and Meagher then resigned in protest. The command of the Irish Brigade then went to Colonel Patrick Kelly.

During the Gettysburg campaign, the Irish Brigade mustered 600 men, scarcely the size of a regiment let alone a brigade. It fought gallantly under Colonel Kelly in the Wheatfield on the second day of the battle and assisted in the pursuit of Lee's army, such as it was, following its retreat south.

After this point in the war, the Irish Brigade lingered on almost in name only, a small regimental size formation. Nevertheless, said Kieran, its proud veterans carried on fighting up to and including the end at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.

This was not the end of "The Fighting 69th", however, and in an interesting postscript to his presentation Kieran told us how the 69th New York Regiment has continued to play a role in America's wars through the Spanish-American War, the pursuit of Pancho Villa, and the Great War, where it became famous as a unit in the 42nd Rainbow Division of the American Expeditionary Force serving in France.

Kieran also had an interesting commentary on the Cobourg, Ontario native Father Francis Duffy, who became perhaps the most famous member of "The Fighting 69th" during this time and who is memorialized with a bronze statue in Times Square. Even today, Kieran informed us, the spirit of "The Fighting Irish" lives on, as the 69th New York is a unit in the New York National Guard and in recent years has seen service in Iraq.

By Tom Brzezicki.

PROPOSED COLLECTION FOR CIVIL WAR PRESERVATION TRUST:
PLEASE BRING YOUR CHEQUEBOOKS OR FOLDING MONEY!

Since our announced targets of Cedar Creek and Glendale for our 2009 Civil War Preservation Trust appeal, we received a notice that the annual $200,000 payment towards the CWPT's mortgage on Slaughter Pen at Fredericksburg is at risk.

The Trust has a 20 year mortgage on this property with a "friendly" bank, but nobody wants to consider being in default on this purchase. Paul Van Nest has a map of it and will place it on our web page. Go to "Civil War Preservation Trust" page for more background on the Trust itself and our efforts to support the Trust.

Donations are being accepted up to and including our June 4th meeting. The total collected will then be converted to US funds and sent to the Trust on behalf our the CWRT of Greater Kingston.

EXECUTIVE
President	John Moyer	jbmoyer@sympatico.ca	613-634-0975
Treasurer	Lloyd Therien	bean06@sympatico.ca	613-546-0278
Sec - Archivist	Murray Hogben	murrayhogben@gmail.com	613-382-2847
Program	Roger Taylor	rogtaylor@cogeco.ca	613-546-2396
Webmaster	Paul Van Nest	pvannest@cogeco.ca	613-544-6802