Blue, Gray, and Green: A Fenian Fighting Machine

All was quiet along the Rappahannock River. After the defeat at Fredericksburg and the debacle of the Mud March, both armies settled down in winter quarters, facing each other across the river. As the armies slept, Brevet-Captain Thomas Galwey of the 8th Ohio Infantry, along with others, stealthily left their huts and walked through camp in the dark. Once past the pickets, they walked to a ravine between the lines.

Met by a sentry at the mouth of the ravine, the delegation was sworn to secrecy and advised not to discuss the present conflict. As each swore, they descended into the darkened ravine. Concealed from prying eyes, the men in blue met halfway with another delegation who had entered from the opposite direction. The men in that other delegation wore uniforms of gray. The two delegations exchanged solemn handshakes with each other, reciting a Fenian greeting:

Are you a friend?

I am a friend.

Then you are my friend.

When the brief ceremony was concluded, one of them began a discussion of how the Confederate and Union Fenians would strike against England.[i]

The man who led the discussion was James Stephens, a founding member and the Head Center of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. According to Galwey’s account, a few days before this nocturnal meeting, Stephens had been rowed across the Rappahannock. When confronted by Union pickets, he asked to meet Thomas Galwey. He knew that Galwey was acting as Officer of the Day and was secretly “B” company commander in the Fenian army. Stephens supposedly had passes signed by both Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin. Galwey did not arrest the intruder, but instead escorted him to the hospital tent of the Irish Brigade.[ii]

This story was passed down from Galwey to his son, Colonel Geoffrey Galwey. This author has been unable to find any corroborating evidence for this episode, nor of James Stephens’ clandestine visit to the Army of the Potomac, nor his obtaining passes from both governments. It is unlikely to think that Stephens coordinated a meeting between Northern and Southern Irishmen.

What is true is that the English and Irish have hated each other for centuries. From the 1840s until the outbreak of the American Civil War, 990,000 Irish immigrants came to America. Their reasons were many: land and job shortages, rising taxes, and the Great Potato Famine. The famine in Ireland resulted in the deaths of one million people. The English government and the rich, absentee English landowners sent little aid during the famine, and some Irishmen thought this was purposeful genocide. It nurtured further hatred of the English and a growing Irish nationalism.[iii]

The Fenian Brotherhood was a secret society founded in 1858 in New York City.  It was a militant, Irish nationalist movement “bent on freeing Ireland from foreign rule and creating a free democratic republic on Irish soil.” Anything English was reviled. According to the 2nd edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, the term Fenian comes from the Irish Gaelic term for a band of legendary and heroic Irish warriors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.[iv]     

When the Prince of Wales toured the United States and arrived in New York City on October 11, 1860, a parade was planned in his honor. Irish-born Colonel Michael Corcoran, commander of the 69th New York Militia and a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, refused to honor the heir to the English throne and parade his regiment through the New York City streets. Only the outbreak of the Civil War saved Corcoran from a pending court-martial and dismissal from the service.

Ultimately, 180,000 Irish-born men served in the Civil War on both sides. William West, the U. S. Consul in Dublin, wrote to Secretary of State William Seward that “. . . Ireland is the most important foreign country to us, having sent more emigrants, during the past year, to cultivate our lands and enrich the Republic, than all the world beside, and having also supplied our Army and Navy with many thousands of brave and hardy soldiers and sailors.” Historian Patricia Vaticano wrote, “At the outbreak of the war some were lured by the opportunity of seeing action and gaining real military experience that later, they believed, could benefit their efforts of freeing Ireland from British tyranny. Those among them surviving the war would then be empowered with the necessary skills to liberate from British rule their own broken and dispirited country.”[v]

Thomas Galwey was one of them. Galwey was born in London in 1846 to Irish parents. The family immigrated to America in 1851 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he joined the Fenian Brotherhood in 1860. With the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Hibernian Guards, with what would become Company D of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Serving with the Army of the Potomac, Galwey became a member of a “circle” meeting at the camp of the Irish Brigade. Known as the “Potomac Circle,” the group drew its members from the entire army. At the center of the Circle was Dr. Lawrence Reynolds, surgeon of the 63rd New York.  Reynolds, from Waterford, N.Y., was a highly educated and refined gentleman, “a man of strong Irish patriotism and the poet laureate of the Irish Brigade.”[vi] Serving as his secretary was Capt. James McKay Rorty, of Battery B, 1st N.Y. Artillery.

On the first Sunday of the month, the Circle would meet in the hospital tent of the Irish Brigade. The group included Irish officers such as Lieutenant Colonel John “Jack” Gleason, 63rd N.Y., Major James W. Byron, 88th N.Y., and Colonel P.J. Downing, Captain William O’Shea, Captain Morgan Doheny, and Lieutenant Maurice Fitzharris, all members of the 42nd N.Y., the Tammany Regiment. Like any Irish gathering, once the serious discussions of politics concluded, drinks were served. Dr. Reynolds would mix up a milk punch of whiskey, condensed milk, nutmeg, lemons, and a little hot water. The whiskey was plentiful and good, and the party continued well into the night. One night, according to Galwey, he attended a meeting at which Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher, the leader of the Irish Brigade, addressed the Irish soldiers in blue. In an eloquent speech, Meagher “expressed the hope that he might live to lead us in a fight against the British.”[vii]

The Fenian Brotherhood was not exclusive to the Army of the Potomac. There were many members in the western armies. Serving under General William T. Sherman as a division commander in the Union XI Corps, Brigadier General Thomas W. Sweeny was one such member. Born in County Cork, the one-armed General Sweeny was known as “an ardent lover of the land of his birth, [who] longs for the day and hour when, in her service, he may meet the common foe [England] of his adopted as well as his native country.”[viii]

During a lull in the fighting near Adairsville, Georgia, on May 20, 1864, Sweeny discovered that the Confederates opposed to him were commanded by a fellow Irishman, Major General Patrick Cleburne. Sweeny decided to send a message to Cleburne. As Captain Irving A. Buck of Cleburne’s staff recorded:

“Near Adairsville, Cleburne received a message under a flag of truce from Gen. T.W. Sweeny, commander of the division opposing him. Sweeny, also a native of County Cork, Ireland [as was Cleburne], proposed to Cleburne that at the close of the war that they together raise a Fenian army and liberate Ireland. Cleburne replied that he thought that after the war they would both have had enough fighting to last them the rest of their lives.”[ix]

Sweeny was arrested for violating U.S. neutrality and was relieved of his commission in the U.S. Army. Unable to post his $20,000 bail, Sweeny was jailed. The Canadian invasion became a diplomatic imbroglio, as a commissioned United States general, who was A.W.O.L., planned and ordered it.  Luckily for the U.S. government, the British government mocked the Fenian invasion, treating it as a joke and their efforts as comic opera. President Andrew Johnson wanting the incident to go away, released the Fenians. Resigning his Fenian membership, Sweeny pleaded to be reinstated in the army. As 1866 was an election year, President Andrew Johnson was loath to anger Irish-American voters and restored Sweeny’s rank against Ulysses Grant’s advice. Sweeny was transferred to Augusta, Georgia and died on April 10, 1892 at the age of 72. Sadly, he did not live to see Ireland’s independence.[xi]

The Fenians, as an organization, eventually faded away. Its successors were the political party Sinn Fein and paramilitary Irish Republican Army. Ireland gained partial independence from Great Britain on December 6 1921. However, Ireland remains divided between the majority Protestant Northern Ireland and the majority Roman Catholic Republic of Ireland in the south. After centuries of violence, things have calmed down since the election of the Northern Ireland First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, and a nationalist Sinn Fein leader who expects a referendum on reunification within the next decade. In our lifetime we may see the reunification of Ireland, a goal that drew Union and Confederate officers and soldiers together in common cause almost 150 years earlier.

[i]Galwey, Francis Thomas, The Valiant Hours: Narrative of a “Captain Brevet,” an Irish-American in the Army of the Potomac, ed. Col. W.S.  Nye, Harrisburg, Pa., The Stackpole Company, 1961, pp. 242-244

[ii] Ibid.  Spreading Fenianism in the Army of the Potomac – Irish in the American Civil War  James Stephens – Kilkenny Archaeological Society  accessed 11/18/2024

[iii] When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis | HISTORY Accessed 11/14/2024

Irish Emigration to America | National Museum of Ireland Accessed 11/14/2024

Brundage, David, Irish Nationals in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998, Oxford Press, 2016, pp. 88-110

[iv] Vaticano, Patricia, A Defense of the 63rd New York State Volunteer Regiment of the Irish Brigade, Masters Thesis, Richmond, Va., University of Virginia, May 2008. p. 14. A defense of the 63rd New York State Volunteer Regiment of the Irish Brigade  The American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd edition, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982.

[v] Ibid. Hernon, Joseph M, Jr., Celts, Catholics, and Copperheads: Ireland Views the American Civil War, Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University Press, 1968, p. 11

[vi] Galwey, Valiant Hours, p. I, forward.   Conyngham, David Power, The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns, ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl, New York, Fordham University Press, 1994, p. 380

[vii] Galwey, Valiant Hours, p. 183.  Spreading Fenianism in the Army of the Potomac – Irish in the American Civil War

[viii] Morgan, Jack,  Through American and Irish Wars: The Life and Times of General Thomas W. Sweeny, 1820-1892, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2006, p.108. The Irish-American Newspaper, New York, 26 April 1862. Thomas William Sweeny Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

[ix] Buck, Irving A., Cleburne and His Command, reprint, Dayton, Ohio, Morningside Press, p. 213. Powell, Dave, “On the Road to Atlanta – Two Irishmen” Emerging Civil War blog,  November 6, 2024

[x] Morgan, Jack, Through American and Irish Wars: The Life and Times of Thomas W. Sweeny, 1820-1892, Dublin & Portland, Oregon, Irish Academic Press, 2005, pp. 119 -134.  General Thomas William Sweeny  (1820 – 1892)

[xi] Ibid. pp. 140-152.