The Irish General: Thomas Francis Meagher

By Paul R. Wylie
Illustrated, notes, biblio-graphy, index, 416 pp., 2007. University of Oklahoma Press, 2800 Venture Dr., Norman, OK, 73069-8216, $29.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Blake A. Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his living as an editor, writer, cartographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of At Peace With Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Review:
Thomas Francis Meagher is probably the most famous (or infamous) Federal Irish personality to serve during the American Civil War. For 18 months he led the Irish Brigade in such bloody battles as Antietam and Fredericksburg. All is covered in this new biography which is divided into basically three parts, the first covering his revolutionary days and exile, the second Meagher's role in the Civil War and the third about his time in Montana and the West.

Meagher of the Sword (a name he acquired from a speech early in his career) was born in Waterford, Ireland, on Aug. 3, 1823. He acquired some education in Ireland before being shipped off to school in England. He later became a well-known orator and patriot in his homeland, striving to drive the English from the Emerald Isle.

Meagher was eventually arrested, tried and sentenced to hang and then to be drawn and quartered, before his sentence was reduced to exile in Tasmania.

After spending a little under two years in Tasmania, where he married Catherine Bennett, he escaped from exile and sailed to the United States (he later married a second woman, Elizabeth Townsend, from New York in 1855 after Catherine's death). Once again he took up the plight of the Irish people.

When the war broke out he joined the 69th New York State Militia and later, due to his connections with President Lincoln, became a brigadier general and ultimately took command of the Irish Brigade.

While in charge of this organization he led his troops during the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam Campaign and then Fredericksburg. At the latter two battles the brigade suffered horrendous casualties, eventually reduced to the point where the entire brigade could only field the number of men contained in a newly recruited regiment.

Meagher was rarely the one to turn down a good stiff drink. This led eventually to the man becoming, if not a raging drunk, an alcoholic. During the battles he participated in, on more than one occasion he fell from his horse. Some supporters provided the excuse that he suffered some sort of injury while his detractors pointed to the bravery he acquired from the bottle.

Following Fredericksburg he was relieved as commander of the Irish Brigade and, wishing to still serve, was sent west. Here he was placed in command of some 7,000 troops with orders to bring them east to join in the fighting there. The transfer ended up being such a fiasco that Meagher was totally relieved of command.

After the war Meagher headed west where he was appointed Montana's territorial secretary but spent much of his time as acting governor. During this time he acquired many enemies, not only new ones, but grinding at the nerves of those who already had a dislike for him, such as William T. Sherman with whom Meagher had a run-in around the time of the battle of First Bull Run.

After putting politics behind him and looking toward a new life Meagher made his way to Fort Benton, Montana, where on July 1, 1867, he went off the deck of the Thompson and into the waters of the Missouri River, never to be seen again.

Was his death caused by suicide, an accident, murder by a British assassin or murder by one of the men he angered in Montana, no one will ever know.

Meagher was mourned in New York City and his former home in Waterford. In 1905 a statue was unveiled honoring Meagher in Helena and even later, in 2004, he was memorialized with another monument in Waterford, Ireland.

Thomas Francis Meagher was an articulate Irishman, revolutionary, orator, exile, Civil War general and acting governor of Montana. The Irish General is a nicely written and easy reading volume. The photographs are crisp and clear and include an especially grizzly one depicting frontier justice.

It does not, and no book can, answer all the controversies surrounding Meagher's life, but it is as close to a definitive work on him that we can get at present.