The Battle of Glendale was fought on June 30th 1862 during the Seven Days Battles in Virginia, when Confederate forces attacked their Federal counterparts as part of the Peninsula Campaign.
Among the Union troops that day were the 69th Pennsylvania ‘Irish Volunteers’ who on June 26th next will have their service at the battle honoured with the unveiling of a historic marker at the site. The marker was sponsored by the 69th Pennsylvania ‘Irish Volunteer’ Civil War Reenactors Organisation and commemorates the Irishmen’s bayonet charge which recaptured a Federal battery that had been lost earlier in the fighting. It is to be placed on a portion of the battlefield recently acquired by the Civil War Preservation Trust, who have issued a press release in advance of the ceremony.
The 69th Pennsylvania Volunteers recruited from the 24th Pennsylvania Volunteers and the old 2nd Regiment Philadelphia County militia is the most under recognized Irish regiment in the Civil War. Sometimes mistaken for the Irish Brigade, the 69th Pennsylvania was tagged “a gallant regiment” by General Joseph Hooker after its bayonet charge at Glendale, Virginia. In the 19th century the regiment called itself the “Gallant 69th” yet time and tide have twenty-first century authors referring to the 69th Pennsylvania as the “Fighting 69th” a name that solely belongs to the 69thNYNG. The 69th Pennsylvania had other nicknames: Paddy Owen’s Irish Regulars, Owen’s Own, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, and the Irish Regulars of Philadelphia among them. Go to Gettysburg and stare up at the regiment’s monument. High on the shaft in the sunlight is the Maid of Erin Harp.