General James T. Boyle, of the Army of the Ohio under
Buell, was the brave man whose promotion to division
commander left a vacancy for “Little Phil”,
that was to be an immediate stepping stone to higher
opportunity. Brigadier-General McMillan, who commanded
the second brigide at Cedar Creek; Colonel Thomas
W. Cahill, 9th Connecticut; Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred
Neafie of the 156th New York; Captain Charles McCarthy
of the 175th New York; Lieutenant-Colonel Alex.
J. Kenny of the 8th Indiana; Lieutenant Terrence Reilly
of the Horse Artillery, all won distinction in the
Shenandoah Valley. Such splendid fighters as
General James R. O’Beirne, Colonel Guiney, Colonel
Cavanagh, Colonel John P. Byron, Colonel Patrick Gleason,
General Denis F. Burke, wrote their names red over
a score of battle fields, but one cannot hope to cover
more than a fraction of the brilliant men of Irish
blood who led and bled in the long, hard, and strenuous
struggle. The 69th New York Regiment was the mother
of a dozen Irish regiments, including the Irish Brigade
of Meagher and the Corcoran Legion. The 9th,
28th, and 29th regiments of Massachusetts were all
Irish. A gallant Irishman, born at Fermoy, was
Brigadier-General Thomas Smyth, who made a name and
died in the battles around Richmond. There was
not a regiment from the middle western and western
States that did not hold its quota of Irishmen and
sons of the Irish. After the names of Porter and
Farragut in the Navy stands next highest in honor
that of Vice-Admiral Stephen C. Rowan, born in Dublin,
of the famous family that produced Hamilton Rowan,
one of the foremost of the United Irishmen. It
was the son of the vice-admiral, a lieutenant in the
army, who carried “the message to Garcia”
from the United States War Department to the Cuban
commander in the eastern jungle of Cuba, before the
outbreak of the war with Spain, and did it so well
and bravely through such difficulties and dangers
that his name will stand for “the faithful messenger”
forever.
As a consequence of their stand with the American
people in the Civil War, the position of the whole
mass of the Irish and Irish-American people was vastly
uplifted in American eyes. The unlettered poverty
of scores of thousands of Irish immigrants, who came
in multitudes from 1846 on, had made an unfavorable
and false impression; their red blood on the battle
field washed it out.
On the southern side as well, Irish valor shone.
While the great flood of the mid-century Irish immigration
had spread itself mainly north, east, and west, the
larger cities of the South also received a share.
The slave system precluded the entry of free labor
into the cotton, corn, lumber, and sugar lands of
the South, but such cities as New Orleans, Mobile,
Charleston, Savannah, Vicksburg, and Richmond gave
varied employment to many of the Irish who made their
homes in the Southland, and so they came to furnish
thousands of recruits to the local Confederate levies.