Colonel John F. Reynolds of the 3rd Artillery lived to be major-general in the Civil War, and to fall gloriously at Gettysburg.  Nor must we forget Major Folliot Lally’s bravery at Cerro Gordo; Second Lieutenant Thomas W. Sweeny, a brigadier-general of the Civil War and the planner of the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866; Lieutenant Henry B. Kelly of the 2nd Infantry, afterwards a Confederate colonel; Captain Martin Burke of the 1st Artillery, killed at Churubusco; nor Lieutenant William F. Barry of the 2nd Artillery, a brigadier-general in the Civil War.  There were scores of other Irish named officers.  In the whole American force of 30,000 engaged, the Irish born and Irish descended troops of all arms were numbered by thousands.

It was, however, in the Civil War that the flood of Irish valor and loyalty to the American Republic was at its height.  The 2,800,000 enlistments on the Northern side stood probably for 1,800,000 individual soldiers serving during the four years of the war.  Not less than 40 per cent, of these were Irish born or of Irish descent.  Of the 337,800 men furnished by the State of New York, 51,206 were natives of Ireland out of the total of 134,178 foreign born, or 38 per cent, of the latter, while not less than 80,000 of Irish descent figured among the 203,600 native born soldiers.  Of the 2,261 engagements in the war, few there were that saw no Irishmen in arms, and certainly, in every one of the 519 engagements that made Virginia a great graveyard, the Irish figured largely.  Of the 1,000,516 mustered out in 1865, not less than 150,000 were natives of Ireland, while those of Irish descent numbered hundreds of thousands.  They fought well everywhere, and it would require volumes to give the names and deeds of those who distinguished themselves more than their fellows.

One name, however, shines with a great blaze above them all, the name of Philip H. Sheridan, one of the three supreme soldiers of the Union, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman being the others.  Had Ireland furnished only Sheridan to the Union cause, her service would be beyond reward.  He was born in Albany, N.Y., in March, 1831, the year after his parents, John and Mary Sheridan, arrived there from the Co.  Cavan, in Ireland.  The family moved to Somerset, Perry Co., Ohio, the following year.  There Philip began village life.  How he gained the beginning of an education; worked in a grocery store; became a bookkeeper; longed for a West Point nomination and got it; how he worked through the Academy in 1853; served as lieutenant on the frontier, in Texas, California, and Oregon, until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he was promoted captain and ordered east, can be quickly told.  His history until the fall of the Confederacy would need many long chapters.  His military genius included all the requirements of a great captain, and his opportunties of exhibiting all his qualities in action came in rapid succession.  In every service from quartermaster