I have been a big fan of Timothy Egan since I read his book The Worst Hard Time, so when Cathy mentioned this one in a comment recently, I read it right away. I listened to the audiobook read by an Irishman and that contributed to my thought that the part set in the US before and during the Civil War was very much the Irish immigrant’s view of a major event in American history.
The story of Thomas Meagher (pronounced Marr) is notable well before he landed in the US. He was born into a wealthy family in Waterford in 1823, and his hatred of the English exploded during the Famine. He was a leader of the failed uprising in 1848 against the English and was condemned to death; the sentence was commuted by the Queen to Transportation to Tasmania. He miraculously escaped and made his way to the US in 1852 where he was greatly celebrated, no doubt partly because of his ability as an orator. He married the daughter of a prominent New York family. He became a general during the Civil War and helped raise an Irish regiment that fought in the first Battle of Bull Run.
I was surprised to find myself reading a book with so much detail about battles, something I know little about. Apparently General McClellan had a good chance of ending the war in early days if he had marched on Richmond, but he kept worrying about what turned out to be phantom Confederate troops. The Irish fighters suffered great losses at both Fredericksburg and the Wilderness Battle, despite their impressive ability to fight. Those three battlefields are not far from where I live and grew up so they were poignant for me.
According to Egan, the Irish fought as Irishmen, and some regiments carried green flags along with regimental flags. Despite their suffering under the oppression of the English, the immigrants were far from supporters of freeing the slaves. Meagher himself had lived in the US for nearly ten years before the war and was not opposed to slavery. Once the war began, he fought wholeheartedly for the Union, but was always thinking of freeing Ireland. The Irish were opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation and shortly after that when conscription began, they rioted against it in New York.
Egan calls the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln’s great gamble. He says that made it impossible for England to recognize the Confederacy as a separate country, something the government had considered. The populace of England strongly opposed slavery and once freeing the slaves had became a goal of the war, the English government could not consider recognizing the Confederacy.
In 1866, Meagher was made governor of the Montana Territory where he died a year later in mysterious circumstances at age 44. According to Egan, he was almost certainly murdered by Wilber Sanders, a founder of the vigilantes in Montana who were a powerful political force. Meagher would likely have been chosen to be a senator, a post that Sanders did obtain.
I was interested to learn about this intriguing character, so well-known in his lifetime and honored in various places now. I had never heard of him, more telling was that Mr. Booklog, that walking encyclopedia, hadn’t, and the most Irish person I know hadn’t either. It was successful in reminding me of the unthinkable views and actions of the English during the Famine.
Timothy Egan, Immortal Irishman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, 368 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the public library.