The American Civil War was also an Irish Fight for Independence

追加: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Around 200,000 Irish-born immigrants fought in the American Civil War overall. The majority fought for the Union in the north, but still around 40,000 Irish took up arms for the Confederacy down south, fueled by slavery and the push into the western [music] states and the election of Abraham Lincoln, a president who hadn't won a single southern state. America plunged [music] into civil war. What followed were four incredibly bloody years that left up to 750,000 people dead. The Irish were caught right in the middle of it all, acting as like the very engine of the war machine for both sides. Now, let's take a look at those Irish immigrants and as well as that, a few of the interesting stories that go with them and the songs that they might have sung collectively throughout those years. Because reading the facts about an event is one thing, but listening to the songs that were popular at the time is another thing entirely. It pulls you in on a whole other level, giving you a glimpse of the Civil War through the eyes and the ears of the people who actually lived through it. Within these numbers were two interesting characters.

[00:01:01]Thomas Francis Maher, who fought for the Union, and John Mitchell as well, who firmly supported the Confederacy. It's worth noting here that before this, they were both key leaders in the Young Irelander rebellion of 1848 back home.

[00:01:15]On the same side as well, they were exiled and eventually fled to America.

[00:01:19]Fast forward 13 years to the start of the Civil War and they found themselves backing opposite sides. Mitchell himself actually couldn't fight because of his terrible eyesight, but his sons took up arms for the South. And in a really tragic twist of fate during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Mitchell's sons were up on the heights firing directly down at Mar's Irish Brigade. As we all know, no matter where the Irish go, whatever miserable happenings have uh happened throughout the years, someone somewhere is always writing a song about it. The American Civil War is no different. Yet though, a lot of these songs really just have they been forgotten about or they're just not well known at all.

[00:02:00]There is one story though that always stood out to me here. During a break in the fighting in the Civil War, the Irish lads on the Union side started singing a song from back home called Dear Old Ireland. It was a freezing night and their voices carried across the icy water to the Confederate camps on the other side. When the Irish on the southern side heard it, they sang back to them, finishing the chorus.

[00:02:22]Essentially, you had both sides under strict orders to kill each other, joining their voices in this dark place and remembering the home that they'd left behind, singing the familiar songs together just to turn around the next day and point guns at each other as if the singing never even happened. The music was right there, right in the middle of all this fighting. But that begs the question as well, where are all the songs about the Irish and the American Civil War now? We hear loads of the events back home in Ireland like the 1916 Easter rising or the troubles.

[00:02:54]Let's try and understand that by putting ourselves in the shoes of those displaced. In the run-up to the American Civil War, we had the Great Hunger where millions of people either died or immigrated. In a previous video, I talked about how those years produced what's known as the Great Silence. Off the back of that, as well, I ended up getting a book by Kathleen McDonald that looks at the famine through the eyes of a young musician named Breine. I won't go and spoil it, but it's well worth a read. I leave a link in the description for anybody interested because it really does give a brilliant insight into that era. That's silence anyway. It carried on for decades and stayed with the people. The music and the poetry, the stories, they all fell to a lower priority when pure survival basically took over. Famine, immigration, civil war, the stress of all of that. Like if I wake up after lying the wrong way all night long. I'm in no mood for playing music the next day, never mind fighting in a civil war. But jokes aside, that's not to say that songs were never written. Okay. One American musician, David Concincaid, took on the task of hunting down and collecting whatever music survived from those soldiers. He recorded two albums dedicated entirely to Civil War era songs about the Irish troops. In an interview I read online, David mentioned finding songs published around the 1860s that basically had no author and no melody, as is the norm with folk songs. You take the lyrics, you slap an older folk tune on top of it, and you make it work. There's one song in particular on his album, The Irish Volunteer, called The Boys of the Irish Brigade. Now, David took these lyrics and put them to a grand old tune called My Lodging is on the Cold Ground, which can be traced back to the 1700s.

[00:04:34]At least Thomas Murray as well actually used that exact same melody when he published his famous song, Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, which is likely where David got the tune from when he was piecing it all together. Things get a bit confusing though when you try and figure out exactly where the melody came from with links to English folk tunes and the likes like that. Unsurprisingly, the folk traditions of England, Scotland, and Ireland are tangled up all together again. But that really doesn't matter too much now, though. At least we have a good idea of its roots and a bit of the history behind it. Now, going back to those lyrics, David found the story behind them actually focuses on the Irish brigade and the French army. So, what exactly was that? To understand it, we need to go way back before the American Civil War. We need to go all the way back to the Jacobite war in Ireland and right up to the French Revolution. So, in 1691, when the Jacobite war ended, the Treaty of Limmerch forced the soldiers into exile or to swear allegiance to the new British king. 10,000 men chose exile and these men were called the wild geese.

[00:05:34]Once they arrived, the French king organized them into the Irish brigade.

[00:05:38]For the next 100 years, these exiled men and their sons fought on battlefields all over the continent in places like modern-day Belgium, Germany, and Italy, where the Irish brigade operated as like the elite shock troops for the kings of France. They fought wherever the French king pointed them, which usually meant going toe-to-toe with the British in massive European conflicts like the war of the Spanish succession or the war of the Austrian succession. And they were highly effective as well. Their most famous moment came in 1745 at the battle of Fontinoi. The Irish brigade launched a devastating bayonet charge screaming the battlecry kivi limnik agasser fall nasnuk. Remember limrich and the saxon treachery. A h 100red years and several generations of families. Why did they keep fighting for a foreign king? For independence and hope. They hope that someday they would win their homeland back. The officers and men believed that if they served the French crown loyally and kept their military skills razor sharp, France would eventually provide them with the ships and weapons to sail back and kick the British out of Ireland. They even sent men over to Scotland to help Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1745 Jacobite rising, hoping a victory there would lead to Ireland's freedom. However, because the brigade was sworn directly to the French king, they ended up on the wrong side of history when the French Revolution kicked off. By 1791, the revolutionaries were busy tearing down the old monarchy.

[00:07:01]They passed a decree officially disbanding all foreign royal regiments.

[00:07:05]The famous Irish brigade was broken up and its men were either absorbed into the new revolutionary army or forced to flee all over again. That 1791 date marks the end of the line for the original Irish brigade. But what I find rather cool about this is that the lyrics penned in 1860, reflecting back on that 100red-year stretch lived on within the American Civil War. They were sung by soldiers nearly two centuries removed from those original wild geese, but who at their core were fighting for a similar thing, to be free and to have somewhere to call home. That's the first comparison I could draw. Like stepping stones spanning two continents from the 1700s to the 1860s. But I felt there was a wee bit more to it as well though.

[00:07:48]Both groups were displaced. The French brigade was formed in 1691 by the Wild Geese, the Jacobite soldiers exiled from Ireland following the war. Then the Union's Irish brigade in America was formed in 1861 again by Irish immigrants, this time fleeing the devastation of the famine. Both units earned also legendary status for their bravery and effectiveness in combat. The French Irish Brigade was considered one of the most elite units of the French Royal Army. Fast forward to America and the Union's Irish Brigade became renowned for its fierce fighting spirit in some of the Civil War's bloodiest engagements, taking staggering losses while assaulting places like Bloody Lane and Fredericksburg, to name a few. As we briefly mentioned, the soldiers in both brigades maintained a strong desire for Irish independence. The French officers aspired to return home and regained their ancestral lands, even participating in the Jacobite rising in Scotland. Towards the end, the Union Brigade was commanded by Thomas Francis Maher, the famous exiled revolutionary who played a key role in the young Irelander rebellion of 1848. For those who don't know, this was the man responsible for the Irish color that you see today, which wasn't actually officially adopted until 1937. Mara believed that for fighting for the US, Irish Americans would earn the moral and material support of the United States in their future efforts to make Ireland a republic. Really, you can see the absolute amount of history packed into these last few minutes, and I've only scratched the surface. I only talked about one song as well. At the end of the day, you have opposing sides singing the same songs one minute only to be killing each other the next. All in all, it reflects the bittersweet reality of the Irish abroad. They were exiles, proudly fighting for and shaping the history of their adopted nation while still keeping Ireland close to their hearts. Now, I unfortunately can't be going and playing any of the songs here.

[00:09:37]Otherwise, the video will just get flagged by YouTube's copyright system.

[00:09:40]Putting these deep dives together takes an awful long time, and right now, I rely completely on ad revenue to keep things running, which goes up and down all the time. If you want to help fund this historical research directly, Patreon is the way to do it. There's just so much more control over the experience there as well, and it's adree, more interactive, and early access to videos. It is a great community and you also get a chance to vote on the stories I cover next. So, you have a real part in where the channel goes. You'll find the link in the description anyway if it's for you.

[00:10:08]The American Civil War story doesn't end here as well. I have an absolutely amazing story coming up that you have to keep your eyes out for. It features a brand new song written by a talented musician. I tell you, he spent months putting it all together, pouring heavy research into actually writing the song.

[00:10:24]But that upcoming video is going to be a good one. It's the real story of a person you would have known absolutely nothing about before. Someone who left Ireland because of the famine and fought in the civil war as a young teenager because he had no other choice. That is exactly the kind of unique story I wanted to bring to you all when I started this channel. There have been a load of challenges along the way like the whole getting restricted from playing songs examples, right? But I hope you understand my hands are a little bit tied there. I have big plans for the channel over time. Anyway, expanding into Patreon, for example, and connecting with you all more makes it a lot more possible to achieve. I would love to eventually, as well, have more people working with me on making these videos because it is impossible for one person just to juggle it all. So, yeah, keep your eyes peeled in the next few weeks. I've heard this new song now through several stages now, and it's been great fun seeing it from start to finish. So, I hope you do enjoy it when it comes up. But tell me, when looking at folk songs, which one do you think really covers the events of the American Civil War the best? Is is David Concincaid the best on that front? I genuinely don't know cuz honestly this was all a new area for me to look into and I'm glad I did. It's so interesting and it's no surprise that Ireland and America have had such a close relationship throughout the centuries.

[00:11:35]But let me know your thoughts in the comments and tell me if you'd like me to make a video on another particular song or a historical topic or something like that you'd be really interested in seeing. But anyway, look, if you enjoyed the video, please leave a like and subscribe as well, especially if you don't want to miss that upcoming video with the brand new song release.

[00:11:53]Subscribing will notify you of it when it comes out. A huge shout out to all the people who have supported the channel over the last year on YouTube and Patreon. You're all keeping these videos coming. So, to each and every one of you, thank you so much. Let's also extend a warm welcome to our newest members, Margaret McDonald, Liam Oconor 363, and Melo Yellow 56.

[00:12:14]Thanks again for joining and I'm glad to have you all here. But look, I'm going to leave it at that. Thanks again for watching and I hope you all have a great weekend. Slongful. Cheers.

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