Men from Ireland looking for work often joined the U.S. Army, for income and in order to find acceptance amongst Americans. Recruiters waited outside Castle Clinton, an immigrant processing center, and offered bounties to immigrants for their service. Many potential soldiers hoped to send money back to their families in Ireland, and so signed the recruitment papers and entered military service.Many Irishmen in New York City also joined the militia, a state-run military organization that trained part-time and whose troops could be mustered into federal service in times of war.One of the leaders of the Irish in the New York militia was Colonel Michael Corcoran, a native of Ireland and active member of the growing Irish community in New York during the 1850s. Born in Carrowkeel, County Sligo, Corcoran was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1849. He found work as a clerk but felt that he could do more, hoping that what he did and learned in the United States could be used to help free Ireland from British rule. This movement, led by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, was known as Fenianism, from the Irish word fianna meaning "band of warriors." Corcoran quickly became active in Fenian circles and looked to get Irishmen armed and trained.To that end, he enlisted as a private in the 69th New York Militia. By 1859 he was appointed colonel of the regiment. On October 11, 1860, Colonel Corcoran refused to march the regiment on parade for the 19-year old Prince of Wales, who was visiting New York City at the time, as a protest to the ineffective British response to the Irish Famine. Corcoran was removed from command and a court martial was pending over the matter when the Civil War began. With the outbreak of war, the charges were dropped and Corcoran was restored to his command because he had been instrumental in bringing other Irish immigrants to the Union cause. In July he led the regiment into action at the First Battle of Bull Run and was taken prisoner. He was later released and died in 1863 while in command of his own Irish troops, the Corcoran Legion.Immediately after the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, President Lincoln received a request from a captain of the New York militia, Capt. Thomas Francis Meagher, to form an ethnic Irish Brigade. Meagher was a name already well associated with the Irish, having been involved in an 1848 revolution in Ireland called the Young Ireland Rebellion. It was his rhetoric that gained him the most notoriety and nickname, Meagher of the Sword. When giving a speech about the need for revolution and reform in Ireland, he appealed to the need for physical force nationalism, counting examples of its successful use around the world.
The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution
Convicted ex post facto by the British government for treason in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, Meagher was sentenced to death but was given a commuted sentence - transportation to the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, present Tasmania. Within three years, he had escaped to New York and became a prominent attorney.Like Corcoran, he hoped to gain some military training and joined the New York Militia, commanding Company K of the 69th New York. He wrote President Lincoln and was given permission to recruit Irish regiments for the Union army. Meagher hoped to counter the resentment many Americans felt against the Irish through military service and to support the Union which had given the Irish a refuge during the famine. More joined with Meagher in hopes that the military experience they would gain in the Union army would serve them in later years to help liberate Ireland with the Fenians.The troops of the Irish Brigade were recruited from the major centers of immigration in the Northeast and many from the ranks of the working classes, the dock laborers and canal diggers. The troops were issued weapons that were outdated by the time the war began, smoothbore 1842 Springfield muskets whose hundred yard range was dwarfed by that of the new rifled muskets. This did not deter the Irish, who would march into battle under their green silk flags, emblazoned with the harp of Ireland, and fire volleys at close range against their Confederate opponents. While their musket, firing a .69 caliber ball and buckshot, was deadly, the Irish Brigade would suffer heavy casualties.Meagher's Irish Brigade was composed of the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York Infantry regiments, as well as the 116th Pennsylvania Infantry and 28th Massachusetts Infantry. These Irishmen fought in the Army of the Potomac throughout the entire war. During the Battle of Antietam, they were sent against an entrenched Confederate position at the Bloody Lane, losing 60% of their strength.Months later, the remnants of Meagher's brigade were ordered against the Confederate position at Marye's Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg. There, in during an assault marked by ferocious Confederate resistance, they earned the praise of their enemies and comrades alike. Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet thought the charge of the Irishmen "was the handsomest thing in the whole war." General Robert E. Lee declared, "Never were men so brave." Brig. Gen. George Pickett, who would make his own legendary charge within a year, thought "the brilliant assault....was beyond description....we forgot they were fighting us, and cheer after cheer at their fearlessness went up all along our line." Their division commander, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock remarked, "General Meagher, I have never seen anything so splendid."It cannot be forgotten, however, that the Irish did not serve in ethnic regiments alone. Throughout the Union army, Irishmen and their sons served with distinction. General Philip Sheridan was born of Irish parents and Generals James Shields and Robert Nugent were both Irish-born. With over 150,000 native Irish in uniform and countless thousands of Irish descent, the Irish fought their way to recognition in the United States through their service in the Civil War. While some anti-Irish sentiment continued through to the twentieth century, the service of men like those in the Irish Brigade brought the waves of Irish immigrants firmly into the fabric of the United States.
When Meade had finally moved, he pushed his army in a more roundabout way, to come at them from downriver. But there was too much time, Lee's men had fortified into a strong defensive line, and so Meade waited again. Lee had known the risk was enormous, and he feared the attack at any time. There was some skirmishing, small outbreaks of musket fire, the feeling out of two great armies close together. The only real assaults had been with cavalry, all along the march, the Federal horsemen thrusting and jabbing, while Stuart held them away from the main lines. When the skies finally cleared and the roads began to dry, Meade moved his army close, and Lee was backed hard against the high water. Now they had dug in, the quick work of men with shovels, because even the foot soldiers knew that they were trapped and a strong push from a healthy enemy could crush them. But Meade did not come.
Below, along the river, a group of horsemen moved out of the woods, and Lee saw the flag of the First Corps. They rode slowly toward the knoll, then one man moved out in front and spurred his horse up the hill, broad thick shoulders slumped against the rain. The wind suddenly began to blow, the rain slicing across them, and the big man leaned into it, held his hat in place with a gloved hand.
The men were spread out around him, secure in the new camp, and Lee rode along the hard road, away from his own tents, where the staff worked with the papers, sorting out the problems in the regiments, the brigades, the endless fight for supplies.
The most successful effort to improve work safety during the nineteenth century began on the railroads in the 1880s as a small band of railroad regulators, workers, and managers began to campaign for the development of better brakes and couplers for freight cars. In response George Westinghouse modified his passenger train air brake in about 1887 so it would work on long freights, while at roughly the same time Ely Janney developed an automatic car coupler. For the railroads such equipment meant not only better safety, but also higher productivity and after 1888 they began to deploy it. The process was given a boost in 1889-1890 when the newly-formed Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) published its first accident statistics. They demonstrated conclusively the extraordinary risks to trainmen from coupling and riding freight (Table 2). In 1893 Congress responded, passing the Safety Appliance Act, which mandated use of such equipment. It was the first federal law intended primarily to improve work safety, and by 1900 when the new equipment was widely diffused, risks to trainmen had fallen dramatically.10
In the years between 1900 and World War I, a rather strange band of Progressive reformers, muckraking journalists, businessmen, and labor unions pressed for changes in many areas of American life. These years saw the founding of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve System and much else. Work safety also became of increased public concern and the first important developments came once again on the railroads. Unions representing trainmen had been impressed by the safety appliance act of 1893 and after 1900 they campaigned for more of the same. In response Congress passed a host of regulations governing the safety of locomotives and freight cars. While most of these specific regulations were probably modestly beneficial, collectively their impact was small because unlike the rules governing automatic couplers and air brakes they addressed rather minor risks.11
During the years between World War I and World War II the combination of higher accident costs along with the institutionalization of safety concerns in large firms began to show results. Railroad employee fatality rates declined steadily after 1910 and at some large companies such as DuPont and whole industries such as steel making (see Table 3) safety also improved dramatically. Largely independent changes in technology and labor markets also contributed to safety as well. The decline in labor turnover meant fewer new employees who were relatively likely to get hurt, while the spread of factory electrification not only improved lighting but reduced the dangers from power transmission as well. In coal mining the shift from underground work to strip mining also improved safety. Collectively these long-term forces reduced manufacturing injury rates about 38 percent between 1926 and 1939 (see Table 4).15 2ff7e9595c
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