“God Help the Irish!” The History of the Irish Brigade
By Phillip Thomas Tucker
(November 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, bibliography, index, 191 pp., 2007. McWhiney Foundation Press, McMurry Station, Box 637, Abilene, TX 79697-0637, $16.95 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:
This is the second Irish book by Phillip Thomas Tucker that I have recently read. The first one covered the Irish in the Confederacy while this volume deals with the Irish Brigade of the Army of the Potomac.

While the first volume was well-written and informative “God Help the Irish” suffers from a few problems.

Of course the Irish Brigade was made up of Irish, both those born in America and those who got off the ship and went into the unit. Despite participating in most of the actions of the Army of the Potomac the three main battles of the Brigade, and where they took the most casualties, were Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.

The book follows the exploits of the unit from its inception through to Appomattox. Unfortunately the majority of the text covers their three main battles and, as with most histories of the Irish Brigade, tends to slack off after Gettysburg.

Though the unit’s numbers fell during the latter part of the war they still participated in the major actions and continued to suffer high losses.

Some of the major points that bothered me were the caption of Irish Brigade members which fails to mention that one of the men shown was the prominent and famous Father William Corby. That same Father Corby gave absolution from the top of a rock at Gettysburg and not a “rock outcropping.”

The Brigade also did not make it into the fields near the Rose Farm during its assault through the Wheatfield. More detail of Gen. Thomas F. Meagher would have been apropos as he was “the father” of the Irish Brigade. Finally, there were also a couple of typos that jumped out at me, (Richland for Richmond and Massa-chusetts is not hyphenated).

 Despite my reservations this is still a pretty good book. The maps are well-drawn but not detailed enough and the illustrations are crisp and clear. “God Help the Irish!” reads well and contains a fairly complete, though sometimes flawed, history of the famous Irish Brigade.