Robert Atkins was the son of the local Episcopal clergyman in Mallow, the Reverend Mr. Atkins. Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War he had been interested in military affairs, serving as an officer in the Royal Cork City Artillery in the 1850s. With the advent of the Italian War in 1860 he joined the ‘British Legion’, a group of volunteers who fought for Garibaldi’s Republicans. While there he struck up a friendship with an American called Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, a Southern adventurer who had been born in Virginia but had grown up in the State of Louisiana. The fateful encounter brought Robert to the United States, where civil war loomed. (1)

In New Orleans, Wheat organised the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion, a motley group of natives and immigrants (including many Irish) who would prove extraordinarily ill-disciplined but courageous in a fight. They soon took on the moniker of the ‘Louisiana Tigers.’ Robert Atkins became a Captain in the outfit, and served with them in the first major battle of the war at Bull Run. One colourful account of the Irishman’s service in that engagement claimed that:  ’It was Captain Atkin’s who led Wheat’s Battalion at Manassas, after the noble Wheat fell wounded, leading the celebrated charge of the Louisiana Tigers with a bare shillalah. ‘ (2)

Firville House, Mallow. Robert Atkins wrote his letter to the Bishop of Kerry and resigned from the Confederate States Army from here. (National Inventory of Architectural Heritage- http://www.niah.ie)

After his service with the Tigers Atkins went on to become Aide de Camp on the staff of Major-General Arnold Elzey, who commanded the Department of Richmond. It was while in this position that he returned to Ireland on personal business; from his Mallow home in early 1864 he decided to assist the Southern cause from afar by addressing the Bishop of Kerry about Irish emigration to America and their subsequent enlistment in Union armies. The perceived swelling of Northern ranks by immigrants was an issue close to the Southern press’ hearts, and they frequently reported on it, particularly as the war dragged on in late 1863 and 1864. Robert’s letter was published in the Irish Tralee Chronicle and was soon picked up and reprinted in Southern papers such as the The Richmond Dispatch (Virginia), Daily Constitutionalist (Georgia) and Charleston Mercury (South Carolina). It read as follows:

FIRVILLE, MALLOW, County Cork,

January 9th, 1864

My Lord,

The enclosed letter from the Rev. John Teeling, of Richmond, Va., Confederate States of America, must be my introduction to your lordship. I had the pleasure of making that gentleman’s acquaintance before the first battle of Manassas, July 21st, 1861, and have the highest satisfaction in stating that he enjoys the reputation among a vast number of admiring friends (of every religious denomination) of being an upright honorable man, and a zealous Christian Minister. During the first year of this unfortunate conflict, my friend, Mr. Teeling, acted Chaplain to “Wheat’s Louisiana Battalion,” from New Orleans, (in which Corps I had the honor to serve as Captain for eighteen months,) composed almost exclusively of Irishmen, and nobly did he do his duty in camp and on the battle-field. On the presentation of new colors to the command, our worthy chaplain consecrated the standard, and on many a hard fought field of Southern independence has its silken folds floated on the breeze- when the victorious shout of “Stonewall Jackson’s corp’s” proclaimed that the minions of a despot had recoiled, baffled and dismayed, before the impetuous advance of Southern troops.

“Is it not sad, my Lord, to witness the flower of our peasantry, at this moment in America, imbruing their hands in each others blood?- Why does the Irishman, who craves for liberty at home, and who complains of mis-government here, support, at the risk of his life, the most degraded despotism the world has yet seen? and why does he (becoming forsooth fascinating with the flowery rhetoric and persuasive powers of Mr. Ward Beecher, et hoc genus omne) enrol himself under the “abolition banners” of Abraham Lincoln, and congratulate himself that he is on a crusade, to grant an unsolicited freedom to three millions of “Africans,” who are better clothed, better lodged, and beyond all better fed then he is himself? I shall answer these questions briefly. No feeling of animosity against a people gallantly struggling for liberty, influences the mind of the Irish peasant, when he sails to America, no sympathy with despotism actuates him to enlist in the Northern army; no hatred of the institution of slavery prompts him to join the fanatical legions of the invader, and makes it the greatest object of his life to carry fire and sword, lust and rapine into every Southern home.

What reasons then actuate him to fight for a despotism which his soul abhors? His own adventurous spirit- the distressed condition of his native land, and then by far the greatest inducement- the enormous bounty paid by the Yankee Government for fighting material. What spirited young fellow, who perhaps never made (-) note in his life, can stand the golden bait of seven hundred and seventy-seven dollars. As seven was a favorite number in Holy Writ, it is to be inferred that the legitimate descendants of the Canting Puritans of England regard that number with a sort of religious reverence. The cotton, tobacco and corn-fields of the South must, indeed, must be a much coveted prize to the consistent worshippers of the “almighty dollar” when seven hundred and seventy-seven “shinplasters” are to be the reward of the Irishman who “undertakes” to “serve an ejectment.” Why does not the Red Republican of New England, abandoning the shelter of his counting house or factory, lead bravely to the field of carnage these hordes of Irish, Dutch, Germans and free niggers whom he so persistently treats to the sound of that music which has no harmony for him- that is, the whistle of Southern bullets? or actuated by the same spirit of liberality with which he started- why does he no remunerate with a pension his unhappy substitute, who returns from the field with a shattered constitution or minus a limb? No, my lord! the men whom I have described are coolly speculating in the life blood of our gallant countrymen, who are the abject dupes of those who hesitate to immolate them by thousands for the accomplishment of their selfish purposes and bloody ends.

On several battlefields in America I can bear testimony to the gallant fighting and esprit de corps of the Irish regiments engaged on both sides. The history of this war will attest the fact that on the bloody field of Fredericksburg no troops ever surpassed in deeds or daring that “Irish brigade” who, selected to storm the key of the Confederate position, (an impregnable range of hills,) was only finally repulsed when four-fifths of its number lay in front of the bloody parapet from which belched forth the converging fire of our victorious artillery.

In the reply of His Holiness, Pius IX., to the letter of Mr. Jefferson Davis, (which appeared in the public journals,) the Sovereign Pontiff thus proves himself, my Lord, the worthy apostle of Him who taught “peace on earth and good will towards men.” He says, “it is particularly agreeable to us to see that you, illustrious and honorable President, and your people, are animated with the same desires of peace and tranquillity with which we have in our letters inculcated upon our venerable brothers. May it please God, at the same time, to make the other peoples of America and their rulers, reflecting seriously how terrible is civil war, and what calamities it engenders, listen to the inspirations of a calmer spirit, and adopt resolutely the path of peace.” Such are the sentiments of His Holiness, and such ought to be the feelings of all who wish to see this unhallowed conflict brought to a termination. I trust, my Lord, that you participate in my views, and hope that you, in the high position in which has pleased Providence to place you, use all the exertions in your power to dissuade the peasantry of your diocese from emigrating to the shores of America, there either to imbue their hands with the blood of their kindred, or crippled and maimed, like houseless warriors dependent on the public charity of some great Northern city. 

I am, my Lord, with assurances of high consideration, your Lordship’s obedient servant,

R. GOING ATKINS,

Captain and A.D.C., C.S. Army.

Right Rev. D. Moriarty, D.D., R.C., Bishop of Kerry, Killarney (3)

Robert Going Atkins letter of resignation from the Confederate States Army, written from ‘Firville, Mallow, Ireland’ (Fold3)

Robert Atkins did not get an opportunity to return to the Confederacy, as family reasons forced his resignation in February 1864. It is unclear if his letter had any effect on Irish emigration and subsequent enlistment, but there was undoubtedly one person who was strongly influenced by his views. Robert’s younger brother John decided that he would champion the cause of the Confederacy. In March 1864 John arrived in the South and took up arms with the famed ‘Gray Ghost’, John Singleton Mosby. The Richmond Examiner of the 3rd December 1864 revealed his fate:

In a charge upon the enemy made by Mosby’s band at Upperville, on the 29th October, fell mortally wounded JOHN ATKINS, a private trooper, the son of the Rev. Mr. Atkins, an eminent Episcopal Clergyman of Mallow, in the County of Cork, Ireland…John Atkins was the younger brother- a young man of high connections in his own country, of good education and great gallantry, who arrived in the Confederacy in the month of March last, with the purpose of throwing himself into our struggle for independence, and at once purchased a horse and joined Mosby, under whose command he has participated in all the dashing exploits of that noble partisan leader. Thus has fallen another of the gallant young soldiers whom European countries have contributed to our devoted armies. (4)

Following the war’s conclusion Robert maintained his love for the South. In early 1870 he returned to America to participate in a hunting trip in Arkansas. The visit would be his last; his death while in the Natural State was recorded by the Irish American of 19th February 1870, at the age of just 39. The final surviving brother, Phillip, was now heir to Firville. He had reputedly served as a surgeon in the Union forces, but did not return to Ireland in 1865. By the time of Robert’s death five years later, he had been out of touch with his family for several years. Despite its geographical remoteness from the battlefields of the conflict, Firville House and it’s occupants in Mallow had felt the personal and tragic touch of the American Civil War just a strongly as many thousands of families across the Atlantic. (5)

(1) Edinburgh Gazette: 17th August 1855, Personne 1864: 99; (2) Personne 1864: 99; (3) Robert Going Atkins Service Record, Daily Constitutionalist: 13th April 1864; (4) Richmond Examiner: 3rd December 1864; (5) Irish American: 19th February 1870;

References

Personne. 1864. Marginalia; Or Gleanings From An Army Notebook

Robert Going Atkins Military Service Record

The Daily Constitutionalist 13th April 1864. Enlistments in Ireland

The Edinburgh Gazette 17th August 1855. Commissions

The Irish American 19th February 1870. Munster

The Richmond Examiner 3rd December 1864. Death of a Gallant Gentleman

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