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'Twas Indeed an Irish Battle
To the Irish on both sides, the cost of Gettysburg was plain
The Irish green shall again be seen
As our Irish fathers bore it, --
A burning wind from the South behind,
And the Yankee rout before it! --
O'Neill's red hand shall purge the land,--
Rain fire on men and cattle,--
Till the Lincoln snakes in their own cold lakes
Plunge from the blaze of battle.
-- 'Song of the Irish Brigade'
By 'Shamrock' of the Sumpter Rifles
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A Conversation Envisioned By "The Brigadier"
Hello, this is Colonel Mike Nolan, late of New Orleans and now commanding the gallant 1st Louisiana ... After a hard march into Maryland we have met the enemy in force to the Southwest of Gettysburg. Our good general Earley says that after turning Eastward from this place we'll be due north of the Yankee capital and in position
to place ourselves between Mr Lincoln and his main supply bases. But for now I want to reach my good friend Thomas Bourke -- he's in the ranks of the 7th Louisiana (some call them and those in his brigade Louisiana Tigers, when in truth all of the fine young men from New Orleans are tigers, but only when called upon...Otherwise, the men are more inclined to carousing than soldiering) ... Mr Bourke and I have some unfinished business of a personal nature (We're both from Tipperary, he's from Fethard, where our mentor, Michael Doheny hails from -- Mr. Doheny's now in New York, of course, and a mainstay of the Irish community there) ... Together, just as this contest was looming, Thomas and a few friends met at my home (just above the food emporium my family operates) and made arrangements -- indeed a pledge to each other -- that if we survived this strife here in America our swords and our honor would once more be pledged to our native land ...
Thomas Bourke here ... Sad to say, I had but an hour or two with the good colonel of the 1st and am heartbroken that he's no longer with us ... I received the sad news in the Yankee hospital where they so rudely dumped not a few of us after we tried to scale those steep heights by Culp's farm and I sustained a debilitating gash -- which, I do declare -- will keep me safe from campaigning for a long stretch ...
... After passing the news about Colonel Nolan and the very latest sad intelligence -- that a son of John Mitchel had made the supreme sacrifice on the last day at Gettysburg -- I believe the third of July -- to my colleagues in New York (I hope to return there shortly if my pledged parole is agreeable to the Northern authorities) ... The poor boy Mitchel had sought a measure of glory in the American contest for its second independence. When he and his daddy John departed Paris for Richmond, they both pledged themselves to live or die for the Confederacy ...
Willie's poor and worried mother in County Down had good reason to pray and worry for her three sons serving in this Army ... God save us, her girls were first taken from her and now the word came: It was Willie -- right there over the hill from us Tigers in the thunder and smoke that Messers Longstreet and Hancock belched out across the plains of Gettysburg ... Willie found all the glory he ever dreamed of, upholding the very staff of the gallant 1st Virginia ... They tell me some good folks of the Irish Brigade of New York -- a Major Haverty and others -- searched the field to no avail, but afterwards I was relieved to hear that poor Jennie's son was indeed found -- and to his wrapped blanket a good soul attached a kind note that read ... "Pvt Mitchel, son of Irish Patriot."
We lost a fair share of great men over there in Pennsylvania -- I'm now safely ensconced in lower Manhattan and taking orders from Mr (Colonel) John O'Mahony ... I can't say I truly enjoy this organizing
and fund-raising gamble but do it we must if the men and girls in our native Tipperary are to be properly equipped for the contest that's inevitable soon as this American contest is over ... We hear that Colonel Pat Kelly led the Irish troops at Petersburg to a gallant end ... But, lord save us, he's but one of many Irish colonels who made that sacrifice for American causes ...... It seems that the leader of New York's 82nd Infantry -- a Colonel James Huston, from Coleraine, in the County Derry -- and a man of '48 indeed was killed on July 2 at Gettysburg just about the exact spot (by the Codori House -- yards from the Irish 69th Pennsylvania Fenians position) where poor Willie Mitchel fell ...'Twas indeed an Irish battle, that one at Gettysburg ... Nolan, Mitchel, and bedad, myself and others for General Mr Lee, and those New York, Philadelphia and 28th Massachusetts fellows -- And the very lamented but very gallant James Rorty -- our Fenian Brotherhood secretary for the Army of the Potomac -- he too, breathed his last there in southern Pennsylvania. God bless them all!
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