Irish soldiers saluted multiple flags | The Irish Brigade
From the start of the Civil War in 1861 to its conclusion 150 years ago, thousands of Irish-Americans played major roles on battlefields, and they loved the flags that went with them. The history of the Ninth Massachusetts Volunteers, for example, describes “our battle flags, the Stars and Stripes and the Green Flag of Erin, which our color-bearers carried in battle…until riddled by shot and shell and tattered and torn by the elements of war and weather.”
The account includes a poetic tribute to the flags: “Not void of tears mine eyes must e’en behold/these banners lovelier as the deeper marred./A panegyric never writ for kings/on every tarnished staff and tattered fold.”
Having saluted the banners, the regimental history praised the color-bearers who led the troops into and out of battles. “All eyes turned to the colors” when a battle began, the book stated. “The ranks closed up and a surging front of determined men went forward on the charge,…bent on victory or death.”
Alongside the regimental standard, the volunteers carried Old Glory and the Massachusetts state flag. The color-bearers, the history noted, “were almost certain to lose one or more limbs, or receive a mortal wound….It is a mark of lasting disgrace to lose the colors…in action.”
New York’s sons of Eire also formed their own Irish brigade, the Fighting 69th, led by General Thomas Meagher, who honored the memory of one of his flag-bearers by writing: “McMahon [planted] his colors with his own hand on the enemy’s works….[He] was stricken down and torn to pieces by the bullets he had splendidly defied.”
The Irish are known for their love of poetry and song, so it’s no surprise that a poem, titled “To the Irish Brigade,” was set to music to salute the sons of the Emerald Island: “All hail ye noble Irish band/that to the rescue flee!/The sword to wield, with mighty hand/the sword of Liberty.”
Thus began the paean, which inevitably led to lines about the American flag and the symbolic harp of Ireland: “Come, string Old Erin’s harp afresh,/’longside the Starry Flag./And soon the vaunting proud ‘Secesh’/must strike Secession’s ‘Rag.’”
The final lines of “To the Irish Brigade” return once more to the theme of flags: “Kind Heaven upon our Banner smile,/when borne by soldiers brave,/and our Green Flag o’er Erin’s Isle/will yet triumphant wave.”