Battles & Units
The morning of 3rd October 1862 had not gone well for Major-General William Starke Rosecran’s Union forces. Holding the northern Mississippi town of Corinth, they had been attacked around 10am by Confederate forces of Major-General Earl Van Dorn’s Army of...
On 24th April 1861, 17 year-old James Allen enlisted in the army at Potsdam, New York. Joining Company F of the 16th New York Infantry, he would see action in all the major battles of the Army of the Potomac...
The last post looked at the nativity of soldiers in the 23rd Illinois Infantry, based on analysis of records pertaining to 1,585 of its men. The place of birth for 1,270 had been noted; of these 682 were from Ireland. Where...
The ‘green flag’ regiments of the Union army remain the most recognisable expression of Irish involvement in the American Civil War. These ethnic Irish units were proud of their heritage and sought to combine this with their loyalty to Union,...
Private William McCarter of the 116th Pennsylvania Infantry, Irish Brigade, is best known for his memoirs My Life in the Irish Brigade. The Irishman’s account of the Battle of Fredericksburg, in which he was wounded, is amongst the most vivid...
The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky was the ‘high water mark’ of the Confederacy in the Western Theater. On 8th October 1862 Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of the Mississippi smashed into elements of Don Carlos Buell’s Union Army of the Ohio...
Much attention is rightly given to those boy soldiers who lied about their age to participate in conflicts such as the American Civil War. However, they were not the only individuals who provided false information to take up arms between...
Thomas T. Fallon was born in Co. Galway on 12th August 1837. He emigrated to the United States in 1859, and just two years later found himself in the midst of the American Civil War. In 1861 he enlisted in Company...
Author of Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War and friend of the site Jim Swan has brought a fascinating artefact relating to the Irish Brigade to my attention. Jim spotted it being displayed by a...
On 14th September 1862 the Union army engaged in a vicious struggle with their Confederate foe for possession of the passes or ‘Gaps’ through South Mountain in Maryland. The discovery of Order 191 had revealed the Army of Northern Virginia’s...