Changes

With the departure of Mitchel and the support of the Catholic Church, Thomas Meagher departed from his position as a passive Southern sympathizer and embraced the role of outspoken advocate for the Union Army. Though not blind to the low wages, scarce jobs, and rampant racism, Meagher maintained his great appreciation toward the United States for being a refuge for his countrymen. He showed his appreciation when he did not hesitate to enlist in Company K of the 69th New York Volunteer Regiment. <ref> McCarthy, Green, Blue, and Grey, 45.</ref> After the Union’s crushing defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, the 69th returned to New York where Meagher spoke in order to bolster recruitment among the Irish. He urged his countrymen to “rise in defence of the flag,” that harbored them safely from the “poison of England’s supremacy.” <ref> D.P. Conyngham, The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns, ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl (1866; repr., New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 49.</ref> While trying to enforce the sense of “Irishness”, both Meagher and Mitchel actually introduced a new nationality to their Irish followers, which emerged as the defining factor of identity when these men met in Fredericksburg.

[[File:Thomas_F._Meagher.jpg|thumbnail|175px|Thomas F. Meagher]]

Against the advice of his subordinates, General Ambrose Burnside, then commander of the Army of the Potomac, ordered his troops across the Rappahannock River and into Fredericksburg. The Confederates retreated across an open field behind the town and dug in atop a hill known as Marye’s Heights. Burnside then deployed a massive infantry assault to take the Heights; with the hope of proceeding southward to the Confederate capitol of Richmond. Hence, on December 13, 1862, the Irish soldiers of the Union came into direct conflict with Irish soldiers of the Confederacy.

Infantry regiments from New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania composed the Union’s famed Irish Brigade; commanded by the General Thomas F. Meagher. On the Confederate side, Brigadier General T.R.R. Cobb led a brigade that included the overwhelmingly Irish 24th Georgia Regiment. From their vantage point, the 24th had a clear view of the emerald battle flag emblazoned with the gold harp ̶ ̶ ̶ Ireland’s symbol ̶ ̶ ̶ of the 28th Massachusetts regiment that led the entire Irish Brigade into combat. The Brigade marched together across the open field at the base of the Heights and began the climb up a slope to a stone wall that concealed the men of Cobb’s Brigade; including the 24th Georgia. When they got to within “50 paces of this wall, Cobb’s solid brigade of Rebel infantry, said to have been 2,400 strong, suddenly sprang up from behind it,” and fired in unison directly into the oncoming Irish Brigade.<ref> William McCarter, My Life in the Irish Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter, 116th Pennsylvania Infantry, ed. Kevin E. O’Brien (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996), 178.</ref> When Cobb’s men of the 24th Georgia arose to fire, so too did their battle flag, which was also adorned with the gold harp amid the stars and bars of the Confederacy.