The journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Vol. III, 1900Various
History
The journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Vol. III, 1900
Various
American-Irish Historical Society -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- United States -- Periodicals; Irish Americans -- Periodicals
“Col. Robert McMillan, of the Twenty-fourth Georgia Infantry, went
from Habersham county and was a gallant officer. He was born in
Ireland, as was his brother, a gallant private in a company
commanded by my father, who was himself of Irish lineage.
“Col. McMillan’s son, Garnett, was born in Elbert county, Georgia,
but was of pure Irish blood. He was major of his father’s regiment
and a splendid soldier. He was elected to congress in 1872, but died
before he took his seat.
“I am of Irish extraction on both sides, I am proud to say. I I was
first a private, then a lieutenant and then a captain, and finally a
colonel in the Confederate army.
“Captain and afterward Lieutenant-Colonel Neal, of this city, was an
Irish-American and a good officer, who died in battle. He was a
brother-in-law of Capt. John Keely, a gallant officer whom you knew.
At this moment I recall no other officers who were of Irish blood.
“There were others who were privates in the ranks, and every one
without exception was a good soldier. Indeed, I have a thousand
times thought of, and with pride endorsed, the language of the King
of Poland, who said of the Irish that ‘there is nowhere on the face
of the earth a people among whom there are so few fools and
cowards.’”
Captain John Flannery, a native of Ireland, who commanded the Irish
Jasper Greens in the Civil War, writes:
“Savannah furnished to the Georgia regiment for the Mexican War one
company of volunteers, something over ninety men, a very large
majority of them natural-born Irishmen. That company was the Irish
Jasper Greens, under Captain Henry R. Jackson, who, on being
promoted, was succeeded by Captain John McMahon, a native-born
Irishman.
“In the late war I estimate that Savannah furnished about 1,000 men
of Irish birth to the armies of the Confederate states. Nearly three
fourths of these served in distinctively Irish companies, of which
there were seven. As to their services in the field, that would be
too long a story, even if I had the data, to write in a letter. The
Irish element held up their end of the line in every duty that
devolved upon them on the march, in the battlefield, or elsewhere,
during the four years of the great struggle.”
Gen. John B. Gordon writes:
“I had on my staff Major Mitchell, a son of the Irish patriot John
Mitchell, and who was one of the most gallant soldiers in the
Confederate army. He had in him the patriotic fire, the ardent love
of liberty and the devotion to principle which characterized his
distinguished father. He was desperately wounded in battle, but
recovered and served to the close. He was always at the post of duty
and in every particular an ideal soldier.”
Mr. P. J. Moran of Atlanta says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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