For Flag Day 2022: The Original ‘Fighting Irish’ by Bill Wade ’69

Post #1529, 14 June 2022

The Irish Brigades . . . Union and Confederate. . . became the epitome of the Irish ‘fighting spirit’ in America . . . Blessed by the University of Notre Dame’s President

Between 1845 and 1855 more than 1.5 million adults and children left Ireland to seek refuge in America. Most were desperately poor, and many were suffering from starvation and disease.

They left because blight had devastated Ireland’s potato crops, leaving millions without food. The Potato Famine killed more than one million people in five years and generated great bitterness and anger at the British for providing too little help to their Irish subjects . . . some of which prevails today.

The immigrants who reached America settled in Eastern Canada, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and inland Southern areas following the Great Philadelphia Road . . . which split the Great Appalachian Valley lengthwise . . . importantly, the primary route used for settling the interior Southern colonies.

Even before the famine, Ireland was a country of extreme poverty. A Frenchman Gustave de Beaumont traveled the country in the 1830’s and compared the conditions of the Irish to those of “the Indian in his forest and the Negro in chains. . . . In all countries . . . paupers may be discovered, but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.”

The emigrants traveled on Canadian ‘timber’ ships, which carried lumber from Canada to Europe and would otherwise have returned empty. The shipowners were happy to carry human ballast, but their ships were not equipped for passenger travel.

The conditions on the timber ships were horrible. A philanthropist, Sir Stephen Edward de Vere, traveled as a steerage passenger in the spring of 1847 and described the suffering he saw:

“Hundreds of poor people, men, women and children of all ages, from the driveling idiot of ninety to the babe just born, huddled together without air, wallowing in filth and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart . . . dying without voice of spiritual consolation, and buried in the deep without the rites of the church.”

The Canadian ships became known as ‘coffin ships’ because so many migrants died during passage or after they reached land and were put into quarantine. Almost thirty percent of 100,000 immigrants in 1847 died on the ships or during quarantine, and another 10,000 died on reaching the United States.

An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine, 1845-1850) changed the landscape of the Irish community forever.

Most of the Irish coming to America were poor peasants from rural counties. Many were illiterate and spoke only Gaelic . . . but could not understand English. And although they had lived off the land in their home country, the immigrants did not have the skills needed for large-scale farming.

These Irish were not well-liked and often treated badly. The large number of new arrivals strained the cities’ resources. (Example: The 37,000 Irish immigrants who arrived in Boston in 1847 increased the city’s population by more than thirty percent.) Many resident unskilled workers feared being put out of work a flood of Irish.

Here Come the Irish . . .

Founded in 1842, Notre Dame’s rapidly growing student body . . . overwhelmingly immigrant males . . . became intimately involved in America’s Civil War twenty years later, most famously in the battles around Gettysburg.

The diaspora caused by the Famine in the 1840s and ’50s formed an immigrant group that supplied 150,000 Irish-born soldiers for the Union and 40,000 for the Confederacy . . . representing a significant portion of each Army.

At the war's outset, many Irish were divided in their support for the Union. Though it gave them rights denied them at home, they still faced discrimination (‘Irish need not apply’) and the prospects of freed slaves heading north to compete for their low wage jobs was troublesome.

An all-Irish unit also solidified Union support from Catholics . . America's largest minority. It also offered Great Britain the prospect of an agitated Irish population should they intervene on the side of the Confederacy.

The Boston Protestant Yankees did object to being in an outfit that was labeled the "Irish Brigade’ . . . nor were they fond of being housed with the New York “Fenians” (Irish revolutionaries).

North vs South . . . Brothers vs. Brothers

The Union’s Irish Brigade at its zenith consisted of five regiments numbering some 2,500 soldiers, officers and other ranks. The unit would especially distinguish itself at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.

There, they charged through murderous sheets of lead coming at them from determined Confederates hunkered down in a sunken farm road. That path would be so thickly matted with the dead that it was called ‘Bloody Lane.’

The same Union Irish Brigade charged up Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg toward well-defended Confederate lines. The remaining brigade, already severely hurt by the charge at the Battle of Antietam a few months earlier, were again hammered in the attack.

Some of intense fire meted out from behind the stonewall at Fredericksburg came from Irish Confederate troops. As the Irish in blue charged up the hill, they might have seen a harp and a wreath of shamrocks and the ‘24th Georgia’ emblazoned on one of the Confederate flags flapping in the wind. The unit was “Brigadier General Thomas R. R. Cobb’s Irish Regiment, Georgia.”

Later a number of its soldiers, in discernible Irish accents and with tears in their eyes, lamented the fact that they have to kill their own countrymen to defend the South’s ‘rights,’ about which many remained unsure.

This regiment was clearly an Irish one. Its commander at Fredericksburg was one Robert Emmet McMillan, an immigrant from County Antrim in the North of Ireland, whose predecessors to Appalachia would later be described as the ‘Scotch Irish.’

A Richmond newspaper described McMillan’s actions in bold headlines as “A Gallant Irishman at Fredericksburg.” According to the newspaper, McMillan had displayed “the utmost coolness and calmness,” as he “waved his sword” along the line to order his men to keep pouring fire into the Irish Brigade.

His coolness in some ways countered the image of the wild Irish or Scots Irish fighter and their supposedly “attack and die” proclivity. He nonetheless had displayed the courage expected of the new Fighting Irish.

Ironically, or perhaps poignantly, the nickname ‘Fighting Irish 69th' was given to them by Robert E. Lee at Fredericksburg, who was moved by his opponent’s bravery. Not a bad endorsement.

Not far away from McMillan and the mountain boys of the 24th Georgia were the Lochrane Guards from Macon, Georgia. They were an explicitly Irish unit named for an Irish judge from Macon and were filled with famine-era, mostly Catholic, immigrants.

The Turning Point . . . Gettysburg

The afternoon of July 2, 1863, was hot even by Pennsylvania's sweltering mid-summer standards . . . perhaps nowhere more so than in the town of Gettysburg. The second day of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, and indeed greatest battle ever fought in North America, was underway.

The previous day, Robert E. Lee's Confederates had driven the Union Army from the town and onto a rise of ground called Cemetery Ridge. Now, Lee wanted to dislodge them from their stronghold, destroy his Northern adversary and pave the way for a Southern victory and ultimate independence.

Unit after unit had been fed into the meat grinder of the intense late afternoon fighting. The Confederate attacks were gaining momentum, so it was up to fresh Union reserves to beat them back.

‘Notre Dame’ Enters the Battle . . . On Both Sides!

One of these units called into action was another famed Irish Brigade under the command of Galway-born Col. Patrick Kelly. The unit of 530 staunch Irish Catholic immigrants from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston awaited the order to advance.

Before going into battle, the field witnessed one of the most striking scenes ever on an American battlefield. The men . . . both Blue and Gray . . . all took a knee, with caps in hand and heads bowed.

A Union chaplain, future Notre Dame president Father William Corby, shouting above the din of battle swirling around them. He granted all the men on both sides absolution as their emerald green battle flags snapped in the warm breeze.

They then formed up and pitched into the fight, charging headlong under intense fire through a wheat field strewn with the wreckage of war—dead and wounded men and horses and overturned wagons—and into a tangled woodlot.

They would emerge from the fierce engagement minus forty percent of the men who'd just been granted absolution a mere hour before. Their battle flags and honor remained intact.

Other regiments made up of predominantly Irish immigrants fought throughout the battle and indeed the war with equal élan (they were Irish after all!). Eleven of the Irish Brigade were awarded the Medal of Honor.

Maybe it is just me . . . there is something about the image of Father Corby leading his solemn prayer amidst the whiz of bullets and the concussion of artillery before going into battle that July 2nd at Gettysburg that rings particularly ‘Irish’ to me.

The battle cry of the Irish Brigade . . . and historically of other Irish Regiments that have served in armies around the world . . . is the Gaelic Faugh A Ballagh (Clear the Way . . . the Irish are coming).

The Battle Flags Commanded It All

The function of the Civil War battle flag was the same for both Union and Confederate armies. The regimental flags were not merely ceremonial, but an essential focal point for soldiers during enemy action.

Commands were often conveyed to the soldiers by musicians (bugles or trumpets), but the colors, carried by the ‘color guide’, signaled each movement to every soldier in the unit. The flag was vital to the army's coordinated movements.

The enemy intentionally aimed at the guide or color bearer making it common for three or four standard bearers to fall in a single battle.

During a Civil War battle, troops fought in a line, a linear formation. The regimental colonel stood behind the center of the line, with the color guard and color bearer placed directly in front of him.

Due to the terrific battlefield noise caused by the firing of rifles and cannons, exploding shells, and screams of wounded and dying men, soldiers often heard few commands, so the colonel was forced to pass his orders through the color bearer handling the battle flag.

All of the troops in the battle line watched the color bearer and followed his movements. If the colonel ordered the regiment forward, for example, the color bearer raised his flag and moved forward.

Because of this role in leading the regiment, the color bearer became one of the most important men on the battlefield—and a constant target for enemy soldiers. Men who carried the battle flag were chosen for their steadfastness and bravery.

Eight men composed the color guard, so that another soldier could quickly retrieve the flag if the man holding it went down. Carrying the flag into battle was a dangerous job, with tremendously high casualty rates.

Yet there was never a shortage of volunteers. As the men went into combat, their battle flag became a visible symbol for all of the reasons they were willing to fight.

There were more Medals of Honor bestowed on soldiers for capturing the enemy's colors than for any other action during the Civil War.

Author’s note: At the regimental level, the 6th Louisiana ‘Tigers’ (insert Brian Kelly joke here) from New Orleans was perhaps the best known in the Army of Northern Virginia. It was devastated defending against Union attacks at Antietam, losing its Irish-born commander Henry Strong . . . a probable relative of the author!