Irishman Henry B. Strong was a clerk in New Orleans, Louisiana before the outbreak of the war. The forty year old was a married man who lived in the city and state that contributed more Irish soldiers to the southern cause than any other. In 1860 over 28,000 Irish lived in the State of Louisiana, and over 20,000 of them in New Orleans. Unsurprisingly it was a rare Louisiana regiment that did not count at least some Irish amongst their number. When war descended in 1861, Henry Strong recruited and commanded the Calhoun Guards, who would become part of the 6th Louisiana Volunteers. By August 1862 he had risen to command of the regiment, part of Brigadier-General Harry T. Hay’s famous Louisiana Brigade. (2)

The carnage in the Cornfield had already commenced before the 6th Louisiana were committed to the fight, as the Union I Corps began its assault and a savage artillery duel raged. Confederate positions in the Cornfield became hard pressed and turned to the Louisiana Brigade for support. The Irishmen and their comrades marched out of the West Woods and across the Hagerstown Pike, into a ploughed field 300 yards behind the frontline. Even though the men lay down to reduce their exposure, artillery began to take a toll on their numbers. Finally, with Lawton’s Georgia Brigade (under the command of Colonel Douglass) to their front enduring a storm of fire, Hay’s men went forward to the attack. The General ordered his men to commence firing as soon as they reached the first line, and they advanced a further 150 yards into the Cornfield, driving the enemy back towards the East Woods. The Irishmen fought for half an hour against Union troops positioned in the woods edge. They quickly found themselves in a horrendously exposed position, taking fire both in front from infantry and in flank from Union batteries. There was no option but to retreat. In a matter of minutes the brigade had been mangled. Of the 550 men that Harry T. Hays took into the fight, 323 became casualties. It was now just after 7am.  (3)

Hays pulled his brigade back to the Dunker Church and John Bell Hood’s Texans took up the fight. The Louisianans returned to the field shortly after midday, where they halted behind Hood’s men and were again subjected to artillery fire. They remained in position until 5pm. However, it had been the morning fighting that had done the damage. Of the just over 100 men of the 6th who entered the cauldron around the Cornfield, 11 were killed and 41 wounded. Colonel Henry B. Strong was not amongst those fortunate enough to have survived to regroup behind the Church. (4)

It would have been sensible if Henry Strong had chosen to advance that morning on foot, but he elected not to do so. Instead he rode into action, no doubt determined to set an example for his men. Mounted on his fine looking white horse, the Colonel became a target almost immediately. The regiment had barely entered the battle before he and his horse went down, in the south-east corner of the Cornfield near the edge of the East Woods. Lieutenant George Ring recalled that he was ‘killed while bravely leading his men in the charge’. When the Irishman went down Ring quickly rushed to his side, where he was himself hit: ‘I was struck with a ball on the knee joint while I was kneeling by Col. Strong’s body, securing his valuables. I got another ball on my arm and two on my sword in my hand, so you see I have cause to thank God that he has protected me in this great battle.’ Ring’s injuries bear testament to the storm of fire the men were then exposed to. As the battle teetered back and forth a Union officer picked up one of the Colonel’s gloves and waved it above his head in triumph. (5)

On the day after the Battle of Sharpsburg some men of the 6th Louisiana returned to collect the body of Colonel Henry B. Strong. His horse remained where it fell, stripped of its harness and equipment. William A. Frassanito has identified a Library of Congress image of a white horse lying dead with trees in the background as the very same animal that Strong rode into action. Photographed where it lay in the Cornfield, it has become a lasting image of the fighting.

This photograph taken in the Cornfield at Sharpsburg has been identified as the mount of Colonel Henry B. Strong, 6th Louisiana Volunteers*

The Irish Colonel himself remains something of an enigma. Little information is available on his life, and although he was born in Ireland, his county of origin is not recorded. James Gannon has sourced a photograph of him which appears in Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers. One of the only other publications that he is included in is the Bowie List, published in 1869. This book details the then burial places of Confederate soldiers who died as a result of the battles of Antietam, South Mountain and Monocacy. The entry for the former New Orleans clerk reads simply: ‘In the hollow south of Dunkard Church, 75 steps and 10 feet east of a walnut stump towards pike.’

(1) Gannon 1998: 132- 135; (2) Gannon 1998: 328, 335, Gleeson 2001: 27, 35; (3) Hays O.R., Gannon 2001: 132- 139; (4) Ibid; (5) Gannon 1998: 136-137; (6) Antietam on the Web: Officers: Henry B. Strong, Gannon 1998: 138, Frassanito 1978, Western Maryland’s Historical Library: Bowie List

*With special thanks to Andy Hall at the Dead Confederates site for the use of the horse photograph, taken from his post ‘They lay as thick as autumn leaves’, which includes an account by Brigadier-General Alpheus S. William’s of seeing the dead animal on the battlefield.

References & Further Reading

Frassanito, William A. 1978. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day

Gannon, James P. 1998. Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers: A History of the 6th Louisiana Volunteers, 1861- 1865

Gleeson, David T. 2001. The Irish in the South 1815- 1877

Sears, Stephen W. 1983. Landscape turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

Official Records 19 (Part 1) Report of Brigadier-General Harry T. Hays, 1st Louisiana Brigade

Antietam on the Web

Western Maryland’s Historical Library

Antietam National Battlefield

Civil War Trust Antietam Battlefield Page

Mary soon found herself facing the realities of war as casualties began to stream in following the first battle of Manassas, where she helped to deal with the wounded. Her diary, transcribed by the Louisiana Division of the UDC, records her thoughts. Mary remembered ‘being asked by some to pick Minie balls out of their legs and arms, while they waited their turn of the doctors, who of course had to attend to the most serious cases first. They have not half supplies. I tore down all the window blinds, and rolled them into bandages; nor was there half hospital accommodations. I made good chicken-soup, and flew around generally. The sights of the wounded were fearful to look at; I was nearly wild with excitement, thinking, as each batch of wounded arrived, I might see my brother, or my Louisiana friends of Walker’s Brigade.’ Thankfully for Mary, her brother’s regiment were not seriously engaged at the battle. As the war progressed, the Louisiana boys under her care came to call her ‘mother’ due to her attentiveness to their needs when they were sick and wounded. Throughout  she always found time to look after her brother, trying to make sure that  he was well fed and clothed, while often despairing of his propensity for losing his belongings.

While Sam’s regiment prepared to take part in Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign, Mary decided to travel to the Richmond hospitals to see what she could do for the wounded soldiers there. She soon learned that the 6th Louisiana were engaged and decided to rejoin her brother and his comrades. While en-route, she heard a report that her brother had been killed in action, news which Mary describes as driving her ‘nearly crazy’. Luckily the reports were premature, although Sam had been badly wounded. While nursing him back to health in Richmond Mary also worked in the Louisiana Hospital, where she cared for many men of that State who were wounded during the Seven Days Battles.

Aside from her work at the front aiding the soldiers, Mary had many other adventures throughout the course of the war. Availing of her British citizenship, she was able to move between Confederate and Union controlled areas, which included New Orleans following its fall. This allowed her to carry out further compassionate work, such as bringing news of killed and wounded soldiers to their families and loved ones behind the lines. However, her actions did not go unnoticed by the Federal authorities, and in 1864 she was arrested in New Orleans and charged with ‘having correspondence with and giving intelligence to the enemy’. At the time of her arrest she was recovering from scarlet fever, but despite this she went on to spend four months in prison. She was eventually sentenced ‘to be sent into the Confederacy as an enemy’. Following her ordeal she was never to fully recover her health, and after the war she sought redress for what she saw as unlawful imprisonment.

One of the interesting aspects of Mary’s wartime experience were her two visits to Europe, once in 1863 and again in early 1865. While there she took the opportunity to visit her family in Ireland. Her diary illustrates that the Irish experience of the American Civil War was not restricted to those who had left for America; she met an Irish family who gave her presents to take to their only son who was a sergeant in Company F of the 6th Louisiana, and a custom-house official who asked her to carry a letter to his brother in the war department in Richmond. One can only imagine what it was like for families such as these who had loved ones fighting at such remove from Ireland. Much of their time must have been anxiously spent waiting for scraps of out of date and often inaccurate information about the conflict in which their family members were engaged.

After the war, Mary was named the first matron of the Soldiers’ Home set up by the associations of the Army of Northern Virginia and Army of Tennessee. She eventually moved to New York where she lived with her nephew until her death in 1902. The true impact she made on so many lives during the Civil War was revealed in a Confederate Veteran article written on the occasion of her passing. The magazine described Mary’s funeral: Through the streets of New Orleans, at an early morning hour, marched a long line of aged men wearing gray uniforms, with bowed heads and saddened hearts. Before them was borne the remains of a woman whom they had known in adversity, and honored as a queen among Southern sympathizers. The “Florence Nightingale of the Army of Northern Virginia” was dead, and its surviving veterans sought to show their love and appreciation by burying her with military honors, an unusual and beautiful occurrence.’ Many of the men who marched in the funeral cortege had first hand experience of Mary’s kindness. One was John H. Collins, who had served with Wheat’s Tigers during the war and ‘whose empty sleeve spoke silently of the past struggle in which she was a participant’. He bore a heart-shaped floral wreath of red roses, tied with a broad white satin ribbon. It was a final tribute from the men of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Irishwoman who had made such a difference to their lives during the war.

References & Further Reading

Confederate Veteran Volume X, March 1902

Gannon, James 1998. Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers: A History of the 6th Louisiana Volunteers

Mary Sophia Hill Diary transcribed by Jan Batte Craven, Louisiana Division UDC