Service in The War
After serving briefly under Gen. Benjamin Butler in the Carolinas and with the 9th Corps during the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first campaign into the North, the 28th Massachusetts was assigned to the II Corps as the fourth regiment of the famed Irish Brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher.
Known for their distinctive Tiffany-embroidered green flag and Gaelic war cry, "Faugh a Ballagh" (Clear the Way), the Irishmen of the 28th Massachusetts saw action in most of the Union Army's major eastern theatre engagements – Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, and the siege of Petersburg – and were present for Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.
Upon completion of their original three-year term of service, many of the 28th's veteran soldiers elected to return to Massachusetts. But a sufficient number re-enlisted by January 1, 1864, to justify the continuation of the regiment as a five-company battalion of "veteran volunteers" until the end of the war.
During the Second Battle of Bull Run, Lt. Col. George W. Cartwright was severely wounded, placing Captain Andrew P. Caraher, commander of Company A, in command of the regiment during the Maryland Campaign. Following the Battle of Antietam, however, command of the 28th Massachusetts was given on October 18 to Col. Richard Byrnes, who although himself Irish, had been a regular officer and a 1st lieutenant in the 5th U.S. Cavalry. Although resented and protested by the other officers of the regiment, Byrnes served with distinction and was wounded on June 3, 1864, while leading the Irish Brigade at the Battle of Cold Harbor. He died nine days later.
Stage actor Lawrence Barrett served as captain of the regiment's Company B, but served for less than a year, resigning in August 1862.
Read more about this topic: 28th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
Famous quotes containing the words service in, service and/or war:
“The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community,—these are the most vital things education must try to produce.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)