“Faugh a Ballagh!” (Clear the Way): The Irish and the American Civil War

Abstract

In his examination of how Hollywood and popular art shape present-day understanding of the Civil War, historian Gary Gallagher recognizes that Confederate themes have dominated popular taste since the 1980s. The so-called Southernization of America and the rebirth of the Confederate Lost Cause in the last two decades of the twentieth century turned an old cliché on its head because now the “losers got to write the history.” 1 The only art on the Union side to challenge the popularity of Confederate themes are those devoted to the Irish, and particularly the Irish Brigade. Comprising five predominantly Irish regiments (the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York Infantry, the 26th Massachusetts—which replaced the original 29th Massachusetts after the battle of Antietam in September, 1862—and the 116th Pennsylvania infantry), the Irish Brigade blazed a trail of glory in the early part of the war. It was recruited and then led until mid-1863 by Thomas Meagher, an Irish Nationalist who escaped to America from the British penal colony of Van Damien’s land (modern Tasmania), where he was serving a sentence of life transportation for involvement in the failed rebellion of 1848. Performing with particular bravery at the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg, the brigade established itself in the memory of the Irish in the Northern states and those in the homeland.KeywordsIrish ImmigrantUnion SideConfederate StateEmancipation ProclamationGreen FlagThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.