Posts filed under: Profiles

Profiles

Irishman Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore served as a musician and stretcher-bearer in the 24th Massachusetts Infantry during the American Civil War. His incredible post-army musical career includes penning When Johnny Comes Marching Home and performing some of the biggest musical shows...
Read More →
On the 22nd May 1863 Ulysses S. Grant launched an assault against the Rebel defences at Vicksburg, Mississippi. His previous effort to take the ‘Gibraltar of the Confederacy’ by storm, on 19th May, had ended in failure. Now he was trying...
Read More →
Michael Corcoran emigrated to the United States in 1849, shortly before his 22nd birthday. In the fourteen years that remained to him he became one of Irish-America’s most popular and influential leaders. Rising to Colonel of the 69th New York...
Read More →
Felix Brannigan was one of a number of Irishmen who were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions at Chancellorsville. The circumstances behind Brannigan’s award are surely among the more unusual. A comrade would later claim that one of the reason’s...
Read More →
On 17th May 1864, Colonel Richard Byrnes of the 28th Massachusetts Infantry paid an early morning visit to Father William Corby, Chaplain of the Irish Brigade. A regular army officer before the war, the strict disciplinarian had been appointed to command of...
Read More →
Some Medal of Honor citations are more detailed than others. That of Wicklow native William Jones is a case in point. It reads, simply, ‘Capture of the flag of the 65th Virginia Infantry (C.S.A.).’ His action took place at the...
Read More →
The 25th November 1890 was undoubtedly one of the proudest days in the life of ‘Paddy The Horse.’ That evening the man from the west of Ireland was a guest at an Irish Brigade reunion being held at the Riccadonna...
Read More →
Although some 170,000 Irishmen served during the American Civil War, it is extremely difficult to gain a picture of what service was like for them across a broad spectrum. This is a symptom of the fact that for the majority...
Read More →
The Battle of Fredericksburg is best known from an Irish perspective for the doomed advance of the Irish Brigade. But a number of Irishmen faced their more famous countrymen from behind the stone wall at Marye’s Heights, dressed in Confederate...
Read More →
The photograph below shows Battery M of the 1st Missouri Light Artillery during Sherman’s Meridian Campaign of February 1864. One of the men in this image is Sergeant Peter Cavanagh, from near Tullamore in Co. Offaly. Peter had a remarkable...
Read More →