A sharp reminder of Irish contribution to the Civil War

By Matthew Crow

Brigadier General Thomas F. Meagher, leader of the Irish Brigade from 1861-1863.

On walking through the Civil War museum at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, in VA, you will see something, standing alone in a 5-foot-wide horizontal case, that wasn’t there three weeks ago, and will be gone in a fortnight.

On loan from the Irish Embassy, the glinting artifact is a sword, used by Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher (pronounced “Mahr”) during the battle of Fredericksburg. It is a fitting relic of the ferocious Irish revolutionary and Civil War hero, nicknamed “Meagher of the Sword.”

Gen. Meagher was the leader of the famed Irish Brigade, also known as the “Fighting 69th,” who fought bravely and with heavy casualties, participating in the some of the most pivotal battles of the war: Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

At the onset of war, Meagher joined the Union cause and recruited a company of Irish soldiers in New York, which was incorporated into the 69th Regiment of the New York State Militia. In Sept. of 1861, during the First Battle of Bull Run, the regiment’s commander Colonel Corcoran was captured. After the battle, Meagher took command of the 69th, returned to New York and formed the Irish Brigade – made up of the 63rd New York, 88th New York and 69th New York regiments. The 116th Pennsylvania and 28th Massachusetts joined later that fall.

Meagher led the brigade with distinction. But the Irish Brigade suffered some of the worst casualty rates of the war. By May, 1863, the brigade was reduced to less than regimental size, with only 256 men remaining of an original complement of 4,000. Twice denied his request for replacements after the Battle of Fredericksburg, Meagher resigned his commission in protest.

He loathed the “ungenerous and inconsiderate treatment of a gallant remnant of a brigade, that had never once failed to do its duty most liberally and heroically,” he wrote in his letter of resignation. “I prayed that a brigade which had rendered such service and incurred such distressing losses should be temporarily relieved from duty in the field.” But it was not granted relief, nor the opportunity to recruit replacements.

“A mere handful, my command did its duty at those positions with a fidelity and resolution which won for it the admiration of the army,” he wrote. “It would be my greatest happiness, as it would surely be my highest honor, to remain in the companionship and charge of such men; but to do so any longer would be to perpetuate a public deception.”

Meagher had led the Irish Brigade through its most horrific fighting and some of its most courageous moments in battle. In the Battle of Antietam, the brigade unsuccessfully assaulted the confederate’s entrenched position on a sunken farm road, later known as “Bloody Lane,” suffering 60 percent casualties, but buying time for other Union forces to flank the Confederates.

“Despite a fire of musketry, which literally cut lanes through our approaching line, the brigade advanced under my personal command within 30 paces of the enemy," Meagher wrote in his report of the battle. Then two of his commanders were shot down and the progress was halted.

“The charge of bayonets I had ordered on the left was arrested, and thus the brigade, instead of advancing and dispersing the column with the bayonet, stood and delivered its fire, persistently and effectually maintaining every inch of the ground they occupied," until another brigade was brought up to allow the 500 remaining men fall to the second line.

In its next engagement, at the Battle of Fredericksburg, the brigade suffered its highest casualty rate of the war. At the northern end of the battle lines, assaulting another sunken road near Marye’s Heights, the Irish Brigade was decimated, earning them the moniker of the “Fighting 69th” from Robert E. Lee.

“Never were men so brave,” General Lee said. “They ennobled their race by their splendid gallantry on that desperate occasion. Their brilliant though hopeless assaults on our lines excited the hearty applause of our officers and soldiers."

Among those Confederate officers and soldiers repelling the Irish Brigade’s attack was a regiment of predominately Irish troops under the command of Gen. Thomas Cobb.

The next day, after daybreak, the brigade was ordered to assemble on the field. Of the 1,200 men Meagher commanded the previous day, “Two hundred and eighty men only appeared under arms to represent the Irish Brigade,” Meagher wrote in his report of the battle. The little band was “unswerved and undeterred, still full of heart, inspired by a bright sense of duty, sorrowful for their comrades, but prouder and still more emboldened that such men had fallen bravely as they did.”

“They prided themselves on their ability to put up a fierce fight,” said National Civil War Museum educator James Brennan. “The amount of horror that the Irish faced in battle and the sheer discipline they showed was just unbelievable. The Irish Brigade shows how you can use national pride to motivate you to fight and do your best.”

After Meagher’s resignation, he was%2