Irish Brigade

Yeah, so James A. Mulligan, he saw what was happening in New York.

He wanted Chicago's own Irish Brigade.

The powers that be didn't really want an Irish Brigade from Chicago, to be honest.

James Mulligan kind of fundraised.

I think, I'm actually not sure why they were so against it.

to kind of aid the Confederate prisoners of war.

So they're allowed in different places.

And sometimes you had one community of nuns from Chicago going down to kind of be with the Irish Brigade or one of the other units.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've got the Irish Brigade, we've got the Foggs, who we've-

Yeah

... we've mentioned in the past, but we've also got a rather charming cipher clerk-

... tarmacked.

And of course, it's just absolute carnage, isn't it? So they have to resort to plan B, and a new plan is made and, and the plan is that Eighth Indian Division will try and take the ridgeline village of, uh, Mozzagrogna on the 26th of November, and Santa Maria two days later.

Meanwhile, 78th Division, which includes the 38th Irish Brigade, which is on the, on the c- actually on the coast, is then to clear the ridge to the, uh, to the coast with or without armor, but most likely now without armor.

A job that was always gonna be difficult is now made more difficult because it's wet, it's soggy underfoot, and you haven't got any fast port.

And then from there he fled to the United States.

So he organized and commanded the famed Irish brigade.

So he fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

And he suffered absolutely horrific casualties in Irish American memory memory.

And

you had Lincoln put that down with by killing lots of people.

um that's um so but yeah the thing is like when he built that irish brigade he played on irish nationalism to get young irish boys to sign up to fight for the american union and the american union used them as cannon fodder and there's a very famous scene i mean gods and generals as a film is not that good of a film but this scene with the irish brigade when they were charging up fredericksburg is an absolutely classic scene And if you know the history of how those boys ended up in that unit, it's just an absolute tragedy because this is where, you know, nationalism is an ideology.

I see it as a satanic perversion because here you have these young boys who are in fact Irish boys who are infected by it, where their love of their nation of Ireland got perverted to be used for advancing the Union Empire and their lives were thrown away on the field at Fredericksburg.

My family name is, as you know, Nilsini, which, little more than a century ago, was O'Neill.

My great-grandfather served in the Irish Brigade, and on its dissolution at the time of the French Revolution had the good fortune to escape the general massacre of officers, and in company with an O'Brien and a Maguire fled across the frontier and settled in Italy.

On his death his son, who had been born in Italy and was far more Italian than Irish, changed his name to Nilsini, by which name the family has been known ever since.

But for all that, we are Irish.

And along comes the Civil War and the breakdown of order in the United States of America, which heretofore has been seen as nirvana.

However, in New York, there is the Irish Brigade, the 69th, and a number of these famine Irish have joined it already.

Timothy Carr is one name, and James Cavanaugh is another name.

Professor, thank you very much for this.

They join, they meet on weekends, but suddenly there's a war, And they're called to the front line.

They're called to Washington.

What made up the Irish Brigade? Why did the Irish participate in what appears to be an existential war for a country they've just arrived in?

Well, so Irish immigrants initially joined the 69th Regiment of the New York State Militia, what today would be the equivalent to the National Guard.