My primary area of research relates to wartime letters written home by soldiers and sailors, and which widow’s and dependents parted with in order to provide the Bureau of Pensions with evidence to support their claim. However, letters were not...
Historically, we have tended to view the Irish American experience of the Civil War through the lens of ethnic formations such as the Irish Brigade and Corcoran’s Irish Legion. Yet of the c. 250,000 ethnic Irishmen who donned Union blue...
Back in 2015 Brendan Hamilton and I published a piece on the site entitled Recruited Straight Off The Boat: On the Trail of Emigrant Soldiers From the Ship Great Western. The work was based on Brendan’s discovery (and his extensive...
When we think of the Irish at Bull Run, our minds turn immediately to the 69th New York State Militia. When we consider the Irish in the Civil War, it is the Irish Brigade that springs to the fore. Just...
As we look forward to the tour of the 69th New York State Militia at Bull Run in May 2019 (details here), the first months of the year will have a number of posts that examine aspects of the 69th’s...
Corcoran’s Irish Legion were, along with the Irish Brigade, one of just two brigade-level formations in the Union military during the American Civil War. Formed by famed Fenian, Brigadier-General Michael Corcoran, the regiments sustained terrible casualties during the 1864 Overland...
New Yorker Marshall Bailey’s moment in the sun came late in life. The summer of 1910 found the elderly American Civil War veteran in dire straits, consigned to life as a pauper far from the country of his birth. His...
I was recently looking through some of the excellent images made available by the J. Paul Getty Trust when I came upon this striking stereograph view. The original label describes it as “Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, surrounded by a portion of...
When we think and examine the Irish of the American Civil War, we often consider first and foremost ethnic units; formations such as the Irish Brigade, Corcoran’s Legion or regimental level contingents such as the 9th Massachusetts and 69th Pennsylvania....
The Irish Brigade is rightly regarded as one of the finest units to take the field during the American Civil War. However, just like all other Union formations, they had their ups and down in battle, and like other formations, they...