The Immortal Irishman

by Timothy Egan

  The Union command turned to Meagher’s Irish: were they ready to fight again? It was an order posed as a question. In double time, the brigade hurried five miles to bolster Porter’s battered forces. Once more the immigrants waded and dragged horses and caissons across the bloated river, and once more they steeled themselves for a close-range struggle to snuff other men’s hearts. They were loaded with buck and ball, their bayonets fixed, Meagher on his horse with his sword unsheathed. The sight that greeted them on the other side of the river was pitiful: Union solders stumbling in retreat, crying out, “We’ve been cut to pieces.”

  Meagher’s men made it up the hill, where most of Porter’s soldiers had congregated, as the last of the light was bleeding from the sky, battle smoke holding a blush of sunset red. “Nothing more was seen or heard of the enemy through the night,” Meagher wrote in his official report. What made him proudest was that he’d stemmed a Union collapse without firing a shot. The mere presence of fresh troops had forced a rebel withdrawal. A witness, Union Army Captain W. F. Lyons, remembered the scene at dusk: “Meagher’s Brigade stood, panting and elated, between the army they had saved and the enemy they had vanquished.” The first of the Seven Days Battles had cost Lee 8,500 men, to nearly 7,000 for Porter. Despite taking higher casualties than the North, Lee had shaken Union confidence. There would be no march on the Confederate capital. “We sleep in the field, and shall renew the contest in the morning,” Lee reported by dispatch.

  Before dawn the Union soldiers left the rise and crossed back over the Chickahominy, on McClellan’s orders, a tide of wounded and combat-shattered men. The general said it wasn’t a retreat but a repositioning. The soldiers knew otherwise. Instead of going one way, toward Richmond, the Army of the Potomac would go in another, to the James River. Tents, trunks, cots, wagons, much food and bedding—all were left behind in the big move. Field hospitals were collapsed, with many of the wounded still in place. Backpedaling soldiers passed black faces, in and out of hiding, in this largest slaveholding state in America. Officially, slaves were now classified as “contraband” if taken by the Union. But the North didn’t want the burden.

  Little Mac’s retreat emboldened Lee, whose new plan was to cut off the Union supply lines and crush them before they could fall under the protection of gunboats in the James River. The nasty task of defending the rear, under incessant shelling and sniper fire, was given to the Irish. They were the last to cross the Chickahominy, and the last out of the month-old camp, burning caches of supplies as they went. In the midday heat, soldiers flung off their uniforms, got seared and dehydrated, and fell with sunstroke beside the road. For two days, marching behind cattle and a mobile hospital, the Irish had nothing to eat. They were under constant attack, scuffling and brawling their way forward. Both armies were hemorrhaging men to desertion and enemy capture. In haste, the bluecoats dug shallow, mass graves for their dead, sweeping some who were still breathing into the ground by accident. “Many not-yet dead were buried alive,” Father Corby wrote, “as we have reason to know from some who revived enough to protest just as they were about to be placed in the pit.”

  At night, the skies unloaded a steady rain, making sleep impossible. On June 30, as the Union Army passed through the sludge of White Oak Swamp, heavy shelling signaled a fresh rebel assault: 20,000 Confederates jumped the Federals. Exhausted, hungry, suffering from the heat, Meagher’s men were held back until evening. At 6 p.m., they were ordered into combat. “Boys, you go in to save another day,” said General Sumner. They fought until nightfall, when guns from both sides ceased fire. The North used the cover of darkness to continue the retreat, walking until well past midnight. There was enough moonlight for Meagher’s men to catch glimpses of Confederates stripping the left-behind Union dead of their clothes and shoes.

  Near the James River, McClellan’s army now took up a position on Malvern Hill, 150 feet above the plain, cut by a pair of ravines on either side—a perch that would be hard to capture. Near the base of the hill, just as they were pulling mud-caked bedrolls over tired bodies, the Irish were roused by an attack from the Louisiana Tiger Rifles. No unit from the South was more feared than the Tigers, a regiment of thieves, wharf rats, convicts and roustabouts from New Orleans, the Southern equivalent of the Bowery Boys from Five Points. They were Irish, nominally Catholic and famine refugees—brothers in snarl and attitude, in culture and faith, in every way but for the fact that one side wore blue and the other gray. It had been a Tiger who killed Haggerty at Bull Run. Meagher’s men had no time to grab muskets or fix bayonets. The brawl in the dark was all fists and knives, biting and head-butting, Irish on Irish. Spying a rebel officer on horseback who seemed to be taking in the fight for his amusement, a New Yorker grabbed him by the pant legs. “Come out of there, you spalpeen!” The word, born in Ireland, had only one meaning. He threw the officer to the ground, and later presented him as a prize prisoner. The fight ended with neither side claiming victory.

  At dawn on July 1, Lee tried to take Malvern Hill. It was all that stood between his army and McClellan’s new base on the James River, at Harrison’s Landing. He had the momentum, he felt, having captured 6,000 Union soldiers during the bedraggled pullback. But he was losing his own men at an alarming rate, more than 15,000 since he took command. Lee ordered artillery to be hauled up nearby hills, giving him—he hoped—enough height and range to reach Malvern.

  Meagher had not slept. After the skirmish with the Tigers, he was primed and jittery with adrenaline. He stayed up for the remainder of the night drinking black coffee with two generals: Richardson, who had been his guest at the horse races a long month ago, and Sumner, the old bull. He told his superiors that his men would fight again if they had to, but they were worn to the bone. For five days they had gone without food and had very little rest. Their faces were smudged with powder, dirt and blood. Every day had been a skirmish or a battle. Meagher had lost many friends. The generals told him they would try to hold the Irish out if they could. As Lee’s shells, canisters of shot and ten-pound balls reached for Malvern Hill, Meagher’s men killed a few stray sheep and built a big fire. They would feast on mutton while the last of the Seven Days Battles raged to one side of them. The Union, it was now clear, had the high-ground advantage: Lee would have to do more than lob lead uphill.

  The Irish never got to taste the lamb. The brigade was needed on another side of Malvern Hill, where Lee had ordered a desperation infantry attack. Meagher donned his green plumed cap, mounted his horse, raised his sword and led four hungry regiments back into combat. It would be safer for him to remain on foot, less of a target, he was advised. Not a chance: Meagher would stay in the saddle and take the odds. He ordered his men to strip off their uniform tops, the better to kill in shirtsleeves or bare-chested. Meagher felt the sharp whistle of a ball passing within a quarter inch of his temple, shredding his cap. Another bullet grazed his hand. He led three charges, aided by artillery from above him. Again the muskets failed them, becoming overheated and useless. Meagher needed time for the weapons to cool before he could charge again. But high ground won the day. For the first time in the Civil War, more soldiers were killed by artillery fire than by gunshot. The rebel dead formed clumps on the ground, mounds of bodies cut down by bombardment. For every one Union soldier who fell on Malvern Hill, nearly three Confederates died.

  When the guns quieted around 9 p.m., the hill was still in Union hands. “McClellan’s army is saved,” Captain Conyngham observed, “but that hillside is covered with the dead and dying of the Irish Brigade.” He watched one man find the body of his brother, prop it up and try to speak to him. The soldier spent the night lying next to the lifeless sibling. In the morning, he built a coffin from boards of an old house nearby and lowered his brother into the ground. Lee had lost 20,000 men—almost one fourth of his army—in the Peninsula battles. Union casualties were more than half of that. But McClellan, in his timidity, had given the South new life: the slaveholding republic that had been his to take a m
onth earlier had driven him away from Richmond. It was left to the Irish and all their fellow foot soldiers to wonder why they were now bivouacked on the James River, instead of parading down the wide main boulevard of Richmond.

  Meagher grappled with the rationales of war, his conscience sometimes getting the better of him when his pride didn’t. He showed Bull Sumner the bullet-riddled banner of his regiments. “This is a holy flag, General.” But he wept at the price. The Irish Brigade had been cut down by nearly a third—the 69th alone had gone from 750 men to 295 in a week’s time. His friend Kavanagh from Young Ireland was still alive, a small condolence. Lieutenant Temple Emmet, another man who had Erin’s struggle in his veins, was sick with what appeared to be malaria. Meagher’s closest aide, young Emmet lay on his back in the summer heat, hallucinating with fever. The boy was a grandnephew of Robert Emmet, whose words on the eve of his execution by the English in 1803 were known in all parts of the globe where the Irish had been scattered: “Let no man write my epitaph . . . When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”

  In the ebb between episodes of butchery, Meagher fought his doubts. What had become of Captain John Donovan, last reported to have taken a bullet through the eye? All the good men he led into combat—O’Donoghoe, dead; Haggerty, who’d lost a brother at Bull Run, dead; Rafferty, a private, just turned seventeen, his jaw shattered, two bullets in the mouth, left behind in the rain, captured or killed. Captain Egan, badly wounded. Same for Lieutenants Carr, Burns and Maroney. And think of his countrymen on the other side, the Tigers of Louisiana. Why were Irish fighting Irish in the New World instead of turning guns as one against the Crown in Dublin? Why, why, why? Well, to show that they were worthy Americans. And indeed, a just-issued Currier and Ives lithograph of the Irish Brigade at Fair Oaks had made national heroes of Meagher and his immigrant warriors. That fame would do nothing for Ireland. The larger goal, as before, was to free their old country. Just keep saying it, to yourself and your men. Never forget what the dying is for. But in truth, how could these sickly and broken-boned boys force the British Empire to give up control of Ireland? Better to think of something else, to think of his wife, and how war sharpened the senses for love.

  Meagher begged to go home. McClellan agreed to grant him a short leave of absence. But not for the purpose of seeing Libby. He would let him go to rustle up fresh recruits. “We want many more wild Irishmen,” McClellan said later. Fine. But one more request: Meagher asked to take Temple Emmet, the patriot’s descendant, with him to get medical attention. Permission granted. In the second week of July, they left for New York, on a mission to probe what was left of the Irish will to fight a war that had become theirs by blood.

  16

  * * *

  Reasons to Live and Die

  With Libby, at her father’s home in Manhattan, Meagher could be a husband again for a few New York nights, having and holding. Their lovemaking had yet to produce a child—perhaps it was not to be—but his proximity to sudden death had brought them closer. He could let down his general’s armor, tell her of the bullets that whistled by him, of how the clear-eyed young who had paraded down Broadway behind a green flag had been left in a Chickahominy swamp—Irishmen in their prime, forever in that fetid hole. He could describe a lead ball going through Donovan’s eye and exiting his ear, or Emmet shivering and sweating on the way home, the letters he had to write to parents of dead children who had decided to follow him to war. He could tell her because he told her everything, as he’d promised in 1855. No secrets. She said New York had changed, if you haven’t noticed. The Copperheads, those venomous Democrats who wanted to negotiate an immediate settlement, were ascendant. Perhaps it was true what they said: Lincoln was not up to the task of repairing a national crackup. Maybe they were right that the North could never win, not so long as the South threw men like the Tiger Rifles at Federal forces.

  In the slums of the Lower East Side, on the docks and in the pubs, the loudest voices came from those fired with suspicion and hate. The Irish were killing people they had no reason to kill, it was said, and dying for people who knew nothing of their struggles. The only reason to enlist in Lincoln’s army was mercenary. Just outside the recruiting station, the papers made a big deal of men in top hats paying Irish laborers to join up, there and then. Here, lad, here’s $20 to sign for three years. The Union needed arms-bearing flesh. Who better than the Irish? If so, why not wait for a better price? A draft was coming, everybody knew it. In July, Congress had passed a militia law requiring each state to fill a quota of soldiers. You could see where this was going. Word on the street was that a couple hundred dollars would buy your way out of service, purchasing another man to take your place. This on top of a bounty from the state and federal governments of up to $160, and $13 a month in soldier’s wages. For the Irish, it would be more profitable to sell yourself to a rich man, let him dodge conscription for a price, and collect all the incentive cash, than to give up a healthy body on the cheap.

  Pillow talk stayed with husband and wife; such candor could not leave home. In public, Meagher was the doubtless face of the Irish Brigade, a sheen of honor and valor, armor back in place, fresh words rolled out again to serve the Union. On the evening of July 25, he made his way through a sweaty crowd packed into the armory of New York’s 7th Regiment. His task was to fortify the case for a war that was not going well. The draft talk did not help. In Irish neighborhoods of East Coast cities, protests had broken out, some of the marchers carrying a bannered proclamation: “We won’t fight to free the nigger.”

  Ten thousand people showed up to hear Meagher speak; half of them were turned away. The brigade had come in for a run of good press, even if the war had not, and Meagher was an idol. At Fair Oaks, at Gaines’s Mill, at Malvern Hill—in each battle the reputation of Irish warriors and their eccentric flair was enhanced. The New York Times had praised “the noble sons of Erin who have so fearlessly thrown their lives into the breach to defend the land of the free from its traitorous assailants.” The New York Herald wrote that “the brogue of every county from Down to Wexford fell upon the ear” after the Battle of Fair Oaks. “When anything absurd, forlorn or desperate was to be attempted, the Irish Brigade was called upon. But, ordinarily they were regarded as a party of mad fellows.” McClellan had lionized them, as had the Confederate brass, grudgingly. General Sumner would not think of going to battle without them. Abraham Lincoln himself, meeting with Union generals at Harrison’s Landing a week after Malvern Hill, was seen grasping the banner of the 69th. “God Bless the Irish flag,” he said. So reported a Union officer. What’s more, he said the president had kissed that green flag. No king of England, no prime minister, would ever do that. And yet this story could not be repeated tonight in New York; it would only stoke jeers that the immigrants were fighting Lincoln’s war.

  Before Meagher could speak, music set the mood. Several thousand voices rose to mouth the words of “The Exile of Erin,” their song to a man and woman.

  “Sad is my fate!” said the heart-broken stranger,

  “The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee;

  But I have no refuge from famine and danger,

  A home and a country remain not to me . . .”

  Meagher was there to convince the mass of exiles that a home and a country were here for them now. Even if they were just warm bodies to throw at Southern bodies, musket holders and cannon loaders, still . . . something momentous, dare he say historic, was happening to the immigrants fighting another country’s mortal conflict. The boys from Dublin and Drogheda, from thousands of villages beginning with the Gaelic word Bally, were becoming Americans, no different than boys from Indiana and New Hampshire. War made them belong. “It is a favorite thought of ours, contemplating the majesty and grandeur of the Republic, that the foundations upon which they rest have been cemented by the blood and brains of so many Celts from Ireland,” a soldier in the brigade wrote his hometown ne
wspaper. Meagher had seen the transformation. As further incentive, Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act, opening the West for settlement by people who could never fathom owning a large tract of land. Beginning January 1, 1863, for a $6 filing fee and a year’s residency on the plot of ground, a veteran of two years in the Union Army could become lord and master of 160 acres—the size of an estate in Ireland!

  The police ordered all windows opened in the stifling armory. When Meagher appeared, he was mobbed. The crowd would not let him move. In his general’s uniform, gold on blue, he looked as if he’d sprung from an oil portrait in a castle, “like one of the old Irish princes from Medieval times,” one spectator recalled. More music. “Garryowen,” the song that accompanied the Irish Brigade in formation and announced their presence in battle, filled the hall. Despite its Anglicized name, the song was birthed outside Limerick as a drinking ballad. Like the best music to emerge from Gaelic cellars, it was part defiance against authority, part battle cry.

  We’ll beat the bailiffs out of fun,

  We’ll make the mayor and sheriffs run;

  We are the boys no man dares dun . . .

  From songs to cheers, from cheers to a chant as they called his name—let the patriot speak. Notable for his absence tonight was Archbishop John Hughes. Fourteen months earlier, he’d blessed the Irish Brigade in a Mass at St. Patrick’s and a parade down Broadway. Seven years earlier, he’d opened his mansion to Thomas and Elizabeth at their wedding, sealing the Meagher vows. But Dagger John was not happy with the horrific number of Irish deaths. Surely the casualty rate was higher for them than for other Union troops. Even if not by design, it was too much sacrifice. And the latest rumors from Washington—a military draft on the way, yes, but worse than that, word that Lincoln might free the slaves—made a dyspeptic cleric clutch his stomach. He’d issued a declaration, embossed with the imprimatur of the archdiocese, aimed at Lincoln. It was read in parishes throughout New York. “We, Catholics and a vast majority of our troops in the field, have not the slightest idea of carrying on a war that costs so much blood and treasure just to justify a clique of abolitionists in the North.”