The citations that accompanied Civil War era Medal of Honor awards tend to provide us with precious little detail. Regularly restricted to one or two lines, they often lack description, and do little to transmit the horrors of the sights...
The latest episode of the Forgotten Irish Podcast explores Irish connections with America’s highest award for gallantry– the Medal of Honor. Since the inception of the Medal during the American Civil War, Irish and Irish American men have been prominent...
Longtime readers will be familiar with my ongoing work regarding Irish recipients of the Medal of Honor. Most recently, I devised and curated the Irish Medal of Honor exhibition on behalf of the Irish Veterans Charity, which is currently on...
Of all the National Cemeteries in the United States, none is more famed than Arlington, the premier military cemetery in America. Established on the former grounds of Robert E. Lee’s Arlington Estate, it has come to be regarded as the...
Of all the Naval and Marine Medals of Honor awarded during the American Civil War, a little over 15% were earned by men born in Ireland. But being recognised for wartime valor didn’t necessarily put bread on the table...
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...
A previous post on the site looked at the efforts in 2012 to honour Seaman Martin McHugh in Danville, Illinois. A Medal of Honor recipient for his actions aboard the USS Cincinnati at Vicksburg on 27th May 1863, Martin had lain in an unmarked...
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...
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...
As part of the Irish-born Medal of Honor Project I have overhauled the Medal of Honor page to provide further information on the 146 Irish-born recipients from the Civil War I have thus far identified. A new introduction provides some background...