On July 21st, the regiment participated in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). Col. Corcoran was wounded and fell into the hands of the Confederates. The regiment lost one hundred and fifty of its members, among them its gallant Acting Lieutenant Colonel James Haggerty, of whom the eloquent Meagher said: “No braver soldier was ever produced by the land of Sarsfield and Shields.” The three months period of service having expired, the 69th Regiment, New York State Militia, was mustered out of the United States service August 3, 1861, and returned to New York City, resuming its position as a militia regiment of the State. The time for which the regiment had been called into service had ended but the great war had only fairly begun, and President Lincoln having issued his call for 500,000 men for three years or the war, about 800 of the returned militiamen volunteered to re-enlist, and on August 30, 1861, under orders from the War Department, the 69th Regiment, New York Volunteers, was formed. Robert Nugent was selected as Colonel; James Kelly, Lieutenant Colonel; and James Cavanagh, Major. This regiment was rapidly recruited to full strength, and so many additional recruits presented themselves that it was decided to organize a brigade. The 63d and 88th Regiments, together with the 14th and 15th Independent Batteries, New York Light Artillery, in furtherance of this design, were immediately formed. The organization of the brigade was entrusted to Thomas Francis Meagher, who, on February 6, 1862, assumed its command as Brigadier General. This gifted and daring soldier and patriot, the Commander of the Irish Brigade, will ever be remembered as a conspicuous figure of his time. In his early manhood, by gift of genius, he had leaped to foremost rank among public men in his native isle. He had pleaded the doctrine of armed resistance to tyranny with an inspired eloquence and had defied the might of his country’s oppressors by participating in an insurrection; he had been condemned to death and had suffered a long imprisonment. The electric eloquence of the peroration of a speech delivered by him in Conciliation Hall in Dublin in 1846, during the Repeal agitation, caused him to be referred to thereafter as “Meagher of the sword.” His fidelity to the warlike principles advocated in his youth on behalf of Ireland was demonstrated by gallant conduct in many of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, and well established his title to high rank among the soldier sons of a fighting race. To tell the story of the Irish Brigade would be to recite the history of the Civil War. It participated rapidly in the Battle of Fair Oaks, May 31st; Gaines Mill, June 28th; Savage Station, June 29th; Peach Orchard, White Oaks Swamp, Glendale, June 30th; and Malvern Hill, July 1st, marching thereafter to Newport News, and proceeding by transports and on foot to Falmouth, Alexandria, Arlington Heights, Falls Church,