Lincoln and the Irish Page 7

  I will not remind them that when driven from their own land, when their huts were pulled down or burned above their heads… . Irishmen came here and had a new life infused into them, a fertile soil beneath their feet… . I will not remind my countrymen of the sympathy and substantial aid, which the people of America have given them… . This is the only country where the Irish people can reconstruct themselves and become a power.

  His speech closed with a mighty call to arms.

  Then up, Irishmen! Up! Take the sword in hand! Down to the banks of the Potomac! Let those who can, do so; and I believe I speak consistently with the views of your esteemed Chief Magistrate, when I say that every facility will be accorded those Irishmen who wish to enlist under the banner of the State; and I have no doubt that, somehow or other indeed with every facility—the Irishmen regimented together, carrying the green flag with the Stars and Stripes and the State arms, will one day find themselves in the Irish Brigade… .

  Meagher acknowledged his own opposition to Lincoln’s election, but said he respected the democratic process. “I care not to what party the [president] has belonged. I care not upon what … platform he may have been elected. The platform disappears before the Constitution.”

  Respect for the constitutional office of the presidency trumped partisan political consideration, he told his audiences. The Southerner, he said, “substitutes for the rule of the ballot box … the rule of the bayonet … against the will of the majority of the people.”

  Meagher acknowledged that some of the same men who sought to exclude the Irish were now in Lincoln’s government. In a speech in Boston after an anti-Irish riot, Meagher spoke of a new era for Irish Americans: “I proclaim … Know-Nothingism is dead. This war … brought with it this result, that the Irish soldier will henceforth take his stand proudly by the side of the native-born and will … look him straight and sternly in the face and tell him that he has been equal to him in his allegiance to the Constitution.”

  He was adamant that by signing for the Union, immigrants were proving the Know-Nothings wrong.

  He was steadfast for Lincoln, even when he fired General George McClellan, a commander beloved by the Irish troops. “Commanding brigade composed principally of Irish soldiers, the Brigadier General considers it not out of place to remind them that the great error of the Irish people in their struggle for an independent national existence has been their passionate and blind adherence to an individual instead of to a country and cause.” He warned that a Southern victory would “encourage the designs of kings and queens and knaves to whom this great commonwealth … has been … a source of envy.”

  Meagher’s hold on the Irish American community was such that Lincoln’s decision to appoint Meagher as commanding officer of the Irish Brigade was a turning point for recruitment.

  Some enlisted men were huge Lincoln admirers, as demonstrated by the following story unearthed by ace historian Damian Shiels from the archives of The Irish American newspaper in September 1861.

  A few nights ago, we had a birth in the 37th, the wife of Private Dooley, of Co. K, bringing him an heir, which the officers forthwith adopted as their protégé, to be the future ‘child of the regiment.’ He was baptized on Sunday, the 15th, by Father Tissot, Col. Burke, and Mrs. Lieutenant Barry standing sponsors in behalf of the regiment.

  As soon as pay-day comes, it is proposed to contribute a handsome sum, which is to be deposited in bank there to accumulate to the credit of the child when he comes of age. Already has been received several presents of clothing, from kind ladies in Washington and the President is expected to contribute his mite, also, towards his namesake, Abraham Lincoln Dooley.”

  Such happy occasions aside, still the old ways died hard. William Tecumseh Sherman, whose march to the sea in 1864 would bring the South to its knees, viewed the Irish Brigade at Fort Corcoran and remarked, “No cohesion, no real discipline, no respect for authority.” Sherman, born a Presbyterian was re-baptized as a Catholic and had as a son a Catholic priest. Nonetheless he clearly disliked the Irish and treated Meagher’s men like “farm animals, with a stench to go with them,” Meagher’s biographer Timothy Egan states.

  That was surprising, given that Sherman’s beloved son Willie attended Notre Dame and another son, Charlie, whom he never knew, died at age ten months and was buried at Notre Dame.

  The level of anti-Irish Catholic sentiment at the top of the Union army has been debated. The Know-Nothing Party, though fading out, certainly had followers. General Ulysses S. Grant, of Irish heritage through his grandmother Simpson (his great-grandfather had left Dungannon, County Tyrone, in the 1730s), admitted in his memoirs he had joined the Know-Nothings for a brief period.

  Grant wrote about his political leanings in his memoir. “Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side, and, on the death of their party, many had become Know-Nothings, or members of the American Party. There was a lodge near my new home, and I was invited to join it. I accepted the invitation; was initiated; attended a meeting just one week later, and never went to another afterwards.

  “I have no apologies to make for having been one week a member of the American Party for I still think native-born citizens of the United States should have as much protection, as many privileges in their native country, as those who voluntarily select it for a home.”

  Grant was the first US president to visit Ireland, albeit while out of office, in 1879.

  It was not all smooth sailing. The anti-Catholic label stuck to Grant in Ireland. Catholic members of the Cork City Town Council objected to Grant’s visit. A member of the council, a Mr. Barry, said the ex-President had “got up the no popery cry” in America. Several others agreed, and there was no dissenting voice. General Grant was disinvited to Cork.

  The New York Herald dryly noted, “The Town Council of Cork seems to be better Catholics than the pope himself.” They pointed out that his two closest friends in the Union army, General William Tecumseh Sherman and General Phil Sheridan, were both Catholics and vouched for his lack of anti-Catholic sentiment. But nothing would sway the Cork Town Council, so Grant went to Ulster instead.

  It has been suggested that the reason General George Meade had difficulty getting promoted, until his heroics as commander at Gettysburg, was because of an Irish Catholic branch of his ancestry and the influence of Know-Nothings within the army.

  The Irish were still held in contempt in high places. Leading New York lawyer George Templeton Strong wrote privately that the Irish were “creatures that crawl and eat dirt and poison every county they infest.”

  They sometimes saw their attempts to enlist blocked by bigotry. For example, the quartermaster general of Wisconsin turned away Irish recruits. “There are enough young Americans to put down this trouble inside of ninety days,” he said, “and we do not want any red-faced foreigners.” By the end of the war, the red-faced foreigners would have played a key role in saving the Union that so many had sought to remove them from.

  As historian Terry L. Jones has pointed out: “The Irish Brigade suffered the third-highest number of battlefield casualties of any Union brigade. Of the 7,715 men who served in its ranks, 961 were killed or mortally wounded, and approximately 3,000 were wounded. The number of casualties was more men than ever served in its ranks at any one time.”

  Some suspected they were being used as cannon fodder, so often were they in the front ranks and holding the hardest ground. It was a feeling widely believed by, among others, Archbishop John Hughes of New York. Time and again, at Bull Run, Antietam, and especially Fredericksburg, the Irish had been pushed into the vanguard and lost men in huge numbers. Only the Iron Brigade, today’s marine equivalent, lost more by some accounts.

  Craig Warren, a professor at Penn State Erie, spoke to the Virginia Humanities Council program “Backstory” about the blatant disregard by generals for Irish lives, especially by General Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg. He believes it pla
yed a role in the dreadful draft riot in New York City.

  “Many Irish Americans decided that what had happened was that the Irish Brigade had been wantonly sacrificed during the battle by generals who saw them simply as cannon fodder. The war effort wasn’t bringing people around to see the Irish as true Americans, and so they turned their backs on that war effort and decided that it was not worth investing further time, energy, lives, and money into. It’s not too much to say that you can draw a straight line between the Battle of Fredericksburg and the New York City draft riots of 1863.”

  In regards to Fredericksburg, The London Times correspondent William H. Russell (himself Irish-born) wrote, “Never at Fontenoy, Albuera, or at Waterloo was more undaunted courage displayed by the sons of Erin than during those six frantic dashes which they directed against the almost impregnable positions of their foe.”

  Despite the horrific losses throughout the campaign, Meagher never stopped trying to build up his Irish ranks. On February 12, 1863, on Lincoln’s fifty-fourth birthday, Meagher met with President Lincoln, who looked terrible, the relentless onslaught of war and personal tragedy taking its toll. Meagher’s courage and stance for the Union made him an important figure.

  Lincoln listened silently, and Meagher made his pitch for a revived Irish brigade and more manpower, as well as overdue promotions. Lincoln heard him out, then wrote a letter seeking exactly what Meagher had asked for.

  That November they met again. The president rose from his sickbed, and Meagher was the only visitor he saw that day. They talked about a new post for Meagher, perhaps with his new commander General Grant, which never came through. But Meagher had proven his usefulness, a fact readily acknowledged by Lincoln.

  It was one of at least three meetings. Lincoln knew what he owed to the Irish and their bravery. After the First Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln came by the Irish Brigade and was greeted with lusty cheers. Meagher, still fuming over how Sherman had treated him and his Irish brigade, stepped forward when Lincoln asked if there was anything he could do for the Irish.

  “Mr. President, I have cause for a grievance.”

  “Yes.”

  “This morning I went to Colonel Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me.”

  Lincoln, not wishing to get embroiled in a fight between officers joked, “If I were you and he threatened to shoot me I’d believe him.” For once Meagher was speechless.

  Meagher died in July 1867 under mysterious circumstances in Montana, where he had gone as territorial governor. He fell or was pushed off a ship. He had made many enemies, especially among radical Republicans and a group of self-styled vigilantes who hung or shot people they wanted rid of with impunity. His body was never found. Outside the state house in Montana stands a magnificent statue of him.

  In one of his last letters to a friend he stated:

  “I want my countrymen to place me up and beyond the sneers of these ‘blackguards’ who are ever so ready to run down an Irishman, whenever and wherever they have a chance.”

  At Meagher’s funeral Mass in New York City, his eulogist Richard Gorman said, “Never forget this: he gave all, lost all for the land of his birth. He risked all for the land of his adoption, was her true and loyal soldier, and in the end died in her service. Would that his grave were on some Irish hillside, with the green turf above him.”

  Meagher sent the Irish to war more than anyone. They fought well. One hundred forty-six Irishmen were awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest by far of any immigrant group. They fought and many died for Lincoln and the Union.

  The fight between the states and between Confederate Irish and Union Irish was beautifully summed up by Fighting 69th historian Claire Morris. During the siege of Petersburg “a truce was declared on the picket line and both sides mingled freely, exchanging newspapers, coffee, tobacco, and whiskey. The Northern and Southern Irishmen argued about the war when they had a chance.

  “‘A fine bunch of Irishmen you are, coming into the South and burning our farms and acting worse than the English ever did in Ireland,’ said one of Mahone’s Irish immigrant Confederates after he had been captured by a group of soldiers from the 69th New York.

  “‘Ah, hold yer whisht,’ replied one of the New York Irishmen, ‘A fine bunch of Irishmen you are, trying to break up the Union that gave ye a home and fighting for the rich slave owner.’”

  There was surely very little answer for that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fighting for Lincoln: the Irish Archbishop

  The second Irishman who delivered the Irish into the Union ranks was America’s top Catholic leader, a staunch Lincoln man who saw the dangers of secession and held firm. This was despite the opposition of many of the bishops of the church, especially those in the South.

  On October 12, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Archbishop “Dagger John” Hughes, the powerful Irish immigrant head of the New York Archdiocese, whose support Lincoln desperately needed.

  Lincoln had defeated Hughes’s preferred candidate, former New York governor William Seward, a renowned defender of immigrants, for the Republican nomination in1860.

  Indeed it was Seward’s closeness to Hughes and his work on providing funding for Catholic education that was most despised by the Know-Nothing wing of the new Republican Party.

  That connection to Hughes had likely cost Seward the nomination, even after he led Lincoln by a wide margin on the first count at the Chicago convention. Any truck with Catholics was too much for many delegates.

  Now Lincoln, at the urging of Seward, was setting up his own link with Hughes, who supported Lincoln’s decision to fight.

  He wrote:

  Rt. Rev. Sir: I am sure you will pardon me if, in my ignorance, I do not address [you] with technical correctness. I find no law authorizing the appointment of chaplains for our hospitals; and yet the services of chaplains are more needed, perhaps, in the hospitals, than with the healthy soldiers in the field. With this view, I have given a sort of quasi appointment, (a copy of which I inclose) each of three Protestant ministers, who have accepted, and entered upon the duties.

  If you perceive no objection, I will thank you to give me the name or names of one or more suitable persons of the Catholic Church, to whom I may with propriety, tender the same service.

  Many thanks for your kind, and judicious letters to Gov. Seward, and which he regularly allows me both the pleasure and the profit of perusing.

  With the highest respect Your Obt. Servt. A. LINCOLN

  Hughes had not asked about the chaplaincy positions, but Lincoln saw an opportunity to engage him. It was an example of how keen Lincoln was to have the spiritual leader of the Irish in America on his side. There were over a million Irish Catholics in America, many just off the Famine ships. Lincoln needed them for his depleted army.

  Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes (1797–1864) of New York was the key figure in the American Catholic Church during the Civil War, and the most important voice calling on the Irish to side with Lincoln. There was no shortage of voices urging the Irish to take the Confederate side, most notably John Mitchel, an 1848 revolutionary, who wrote eloquently of the plight of the Irish peasant but could never make the same connection to enslaved blacks.

  Like Thomas Francis Meagher, Mitchel had escaped exile in Australia and had come to the US, but his moral direction deserted him as he threw in his lot with the slavery-supporting South. He derided Lincoln as “an ignoramus and a bore; not an apostle at all; no grand reformer, not so much as an abolitionist, except by accident—a man of very small account in every way.”

  The Southern Citizen newspaper that he set up in Memphis had a simple credo: “The Institution of Negro Slavery is a sound, just, wholesome Institution; and therefore, that the question of re-opening the African Slave Trade is a question of expediency alone.”

  He called blacks “an innately inferior people… . We deny that it is a crime, or a wrong, or even a peccadillo to hold slaves, to buy slaves, to keep slaves to their work b
y flogging or other needful correction.” He wished to make the people of the US “proud and fond of [slavery] as a national institution, and advocate its extension by re-opening the trade in Negroes.”

  He based many of his beliefs on slavery on a two-thousand-mile trek through the South to observe it firsthand.

  As History Ireland magazine noted in an article on Mitchel and his support for slavery in May 2007: “He particularly admired the South’s gentility and old-world manners, claiming that on a journey of two thousand miles through the cotton states he had not heard a harsh word or seen a violent action.”

  The “peculiar gentleness of demeanor and quiet courtesy” of the South he attributed to slavery, which he believed had a restraining influence on the slave-owner because of the power and responsibility with which he was entrusted.

  The Southern custom of speaking gently to servants and slaves created “‘a softness of manner and tone which, in educated people, being united with dignity, and self-possession, gives me the ideal of a well-bred person.’”

  With Irish of the prominence of Mitchel preaching Confederate doctrine, as well as the Southern Catholic bishops staying firm in support of the Confederacy, the position of Hughes was of paramount importance.

  Bishop Lynch of Charleston, a friend of Hughes, positively endorsed slavery and kept ninety-five slaves of his own. He also condoned the rape of black girls by white men on the grounds that it kept white women pure. Archbishop Hughes was not of such a racist mindset. Years later, the two clerics would be sent on separate competing missions to woo the pope to their side.

  Hughes from the beginning was beloved by his flock; the story of the gardener who became an Archbishop was the stuff of legend. He had come out of nowhere. Born on a tenant farm in Tyrone in 1797, he was hedge schooled (writer William Carleton was a schoolmate).

  At age fifteen, Hughes was incensed when the family was refused the right to bury his sister in a Catholic grave with a priest present because of Ireland’s penal laws. The best the priest could do was bless a handful of earth and pass it to young Hughes to sprinkle on the coffin. Many years later, Hughes said, he had dreamed of “a country in which no stigma of inferiority would be impressed on my brow, simply because I professed one creed or another.”