One of the key aims of this site is the promotion of awareness in Ireland regarding the extent of Irish involvement in the American Civil War. Although well known in the United States, the defining influence this conflict had on...
Gary W. Gallagher’s latest book The Union War focuses much of its attention on the central reason why so many men volunteered to fight in Lincoln’s armies. Slavery caused the war, but for the majority of those in the North it...
Michael William Burns was born in Ireland in 1834. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 14, and prior to the outbreak of the Civil War worked as a city inspector and a fireman. It was his...
Private Albert D.J. Cashier served in the ranks of the 95th Illinois from their muster in on 4th September 1862 until they were discharged in August 1865. A member of the regiment’s Company G, he witnessed some hard fighting at...
As the Irish in the American Civil War site continues to develop it is intended that the regular articles will be interspersed with ‘Discussion and Debate’ pieces, aimed at stimulating dialogue and asking or posing specific questions about the Irish...
The first in our ‘Discussion and Debate’ series saw author Jim Swan put forward an article ‘On Stereotyping Irish Soldiers’. Among the works cited in the piece was The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861-1865,...
Color Sergeant Peter Welsh of the 28th Massachusetts Regiment has become one of the best known members of the Irish Brigade. The publication of his Civil War letters in 1986, under the title Irish Green and Union Blue, revealed the picture of...
Shortly before 9pm on 2nd July 1887 a group of Confederate veterans disembarked from their train cars at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There to greet them were some of their former foe, nearly 500 men of the old Union Philadelphia Brigade. Illuminated...
The Books section of the site is intended to be a comprehensive resource of all relevant books published since 1861 on the Irish experience of the Civil War. It has now grown to 146 titles, and is, as far as...
The American Civil War of 1861-65 took place some 150 years ago. It is very difficult for us to imagine what is was like to experience the upheaval of that period, or to have borne witness to the horrors of battlefields such...