Section II

THE CIVIL WAR

Chapter 6

Off to War

Neither Pat nor John paid much attention during the first half of 1860 as the older men at Bishop Timon’s various institutions discussed the pending presidential election. Many of the men knew Bishop Timon well. In fact, they were all hired by him in one way or another. They listened to his sermons or discussions of his sermons. Those who could read loyally bought his newspaper, the Sentinel, and were heavily influenced by his point of view and that of his editor/publisher.

John and Pat were much more interested in women and baseball. They were influenced by the friends they played ball with, attended dances with at St. Bridget’s, and accompanied to downtown dance halls. Occasionally, they squirreled away a quarter and attended musical shows featuring New York talent. Both boys liked to dance, which made them popular with girls. Pat and John knew girls they were attracted to, but they preferred to run with the crowd rather than with any one girl. Settling down and marrying was the last thing on their minds, even though several friends their own age had already done so.

Both joined Maire working with the bishop’s Irish Festival committee. The festival, held the weekend of September 3, 1860, had taken much longer to organize than Bishop Timon had dreamed. Seanachaithe committed and then canceled because of delays caused by the festival committee itself. Games were slow coming together. City fathers balked at making the open space along the Niagara River available. Only when it became apparent that Bishop Timon had taken charge and Father Corbett was making the behind-the-scenes arrangements did everything begin to come together in a timely manner.

Ten thousand Irish participated over two days from all over Western New York and southern Ontario. Mayor William Fargo opened the festival on Saturday on the grounds along the Niagara River. The festival culminated with a Sunday noon high mass concelebrated by three bishops, two of them from Canada.

A parade mobilized after mass in front of the cathedral and proceeded down the path along the Erie Canal to an open park-like area near Fort Porter on the Niagara River. It featured marching bands, Irish dancers, three groups of bagpipers, and over 1,000 well-behaved paraders led by a contingent of mounted police from the City of Buffalo. Marchers were dressed in a motley mix of green. The bishop himself walked at the center of the parade with only Father Corbett at his side. Both clerics dressed in black suits and black shirts open at the collar. The bishop had spread members of his committee throughout the parade, both among onlookers and marchers. The day was sunlit and warm, a perfect late summer day.

Everyone was in a jovial mood and enjoyed themselves. Heads were high. Backs were straight. The bishop’s message of Irish pride hung subtly in the air. The two days featured step dancing, storytelling, games of chance, hurling, a rowing regatta on the river, and the main event: an imitation of the fianna trials consisting of foot races, hammer throwing, high and distance jumping, and other games of physical skill.

Perhaps the best received was a forty-five minute concert toward the end of the festival, featuring time-honored Irish instruments: harps, bagpipes, tin whistles, bones—the most ancient of Irish instruments—and bodhrans, Celtic drums that looked like and may have evolved from tambourines. The combination was loud and penetrating.

Fifteen minutes into the concert, three young boys began a spontaneous step dance before the stage. Soon the grass in front of the musicians filled with dancers of unequal ability but contagious enthusiasm. Bishop Timon and Father Corbett were among the first to join in. Musicians and dancers prodded one another into group and individual displays. It was the most serendipitous event of the program and the one most remembered afterward.

Bishop Timon closed the festival Sunday night, surrounded by 1,000 participants. He thanked them for the civil way they had conducted themselves, had especially kind things to say about those who had come from afar, reminded all Americans to vote in the coming elections, and closed the festivities with a brief prayer and blessing.

On the way home, Gram pointed out to Theresa and the boys how perfectly the festival had come off. “It was all because of the way the bishop organized it,” she said. “There were police everywhere and he allowed no alcohol for sale. So if you were goin’ to drink heavy, you had to bring it in your own wagon.”

The Sentinel covered the festival in glorious detail and ignored some of the drunken revelry accompanying it in spite of the bishop’s and the police department’s best efforts. The other papers doted on the latter and gave scant notice to unique festival events and the generally family-friendly atmosphere. The business community breathed a sigh of relief that the festival was over and conducted in such an orderly manner.

Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. The men in the Ward voted solidly for him. He had dodged the question of freeing the slaves and run on a save-the-Union platform that included opening up the West to homesteaders, keeping territories and new states free of slavery, and building a transcontinental railroad. First Warders saw this as good for them. An open, accessible West without slaves would drain off workers from the East, both immigrants and natives. It was sure to leave more jobs in Buffalo for them and maybe even raise wages.

South Carolina, having long threatened to secede if Lincoln was elected, voted for secession on December 20, 1860. Five other states in the Deep South followed in January. The threat of war caused many in the Ward to become more personally engaged in political and war-related conversations. War was in the wind.

At mass on Sundays, the congregation heard the bishop defend the new president’s position against secession. He proclaimed that war was not only inevitable, but morally defensible. He quoted from the Epistle of James, Chapter 4, and from Matthew, Chapter 24, to support his position. The Union must be saved, he said, even if it meant going to war.

He took a more equivocal position on the abolition of slavery, but followed Pius IX, saying it was wrong to hold any one race in bondage. At work and in the pubs of the Ward, the older men agreed with the bishop that the Union had to be saved for the good of the Irish race, but most were for keeping coloreds exactly where they were. In fact, if they could ship the blacks, who were concentrated on Canal and Michigan Streets, to Liberia, as Lincoln once suggested, they claimed they’d gladly pay for the boats.

John told Pat as they finished work on Saturday, February 2, 1861, John’s 18th birthday, that the likelihood of war and serving in Lincoln’s army was weighing on his mind. He wanted to hear what Gram and Uncle Jack had to say about it the next day at dinner. Pat also heard talk of war from coworkers and fellow imbibers at Kennedy’s. But his head was not in it. As much as he resented and disliked the long hours of work, the rest of his life was just great. There was nothing like being a young man in the Ward. He was happy at home. He adored Gram. He had his own stool at Kennedy’s. He was recognized throughout the city for his baseball heroics. He had money, girls when he wanted them, male friends when he didn’t . . . what else was there?

On Sunday, John asked, “Uncle Jack, what does it mean for the Union that so many Southern states have seceded?”

“Well, it means South Carolina and five other states are after being no longer a part of the United States. Several other slave states will likely follow. Mr. Lincoln will not stand by idle. Understand, John?”

He nodded in assent, but there was confusion in his mind. Unlike many of the young men at work, John was not keen on fighting. Life was only now becoming enjoyable. He had enormous pride in working for Bishop Timon. He had grown to love Aunt Theresa and had a great social life. He had no desire to leave Buffalo and go off to war.

“Do you think we will be forced to serve in the Union Army?”

“No, John, right now there are thousands of men wantin’ to join. The papers say it could be all over in a couple of months. So you might think about waitin’ to volunteer.”

From that day on, John read the Sentinel whenever it was published and listened intently to Bishop Timon’s sermons, as well as conversations at work and in the barbershop.

On April 15, 1861, the day after the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln issued a declaration of war and called for 75,000 volunteers. John decided to wait until Pat turned eighteen the following March and then to enlist with his brother. Pat could have enlisted at 17 with his grandmother’s permission, but she told them both it was better they wait. Her thinking was a little maturity might blunt Pat’s rash behavior and save him from being killed.

“I love Gram an’ all,” Pat told his brother, “but the minute I turn eighteen, I’m joining up. An’ no one is gonna stop me!” Pat’s attitude toward the war had changed 180 degrees.

John winced. “The papers are saying it would be over in six weeks. With any luck we may be able to escape the war altogether. I say we see how things break.”

“I want to get out of this town and fight,” said Pat. “Are ye comin’ with me or are ye stayin’ home with the women? You decide. I’m goin’.”

John shook his head. He could see his brother was not going to be dissuaded by anything he could say.

Pat’s young coworkers were looking forward to leaving work and doing something patriotic, traveling on steamboats, seeing other parts of the country, and fighting a war. A smoldering fire blazed in him, too.

Over the next year, John read about the armies of both nations—the United States and the Confederate States—fighting and dying with no decisive victories won by either side. It became clear to him after the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, that Southern generals were much better at preparing and leading their troops than Northern generals. The fighting had turned into an honest-to-God war, a civil war, as the papers called it. And it seemed it would go on with no end in sight.

In June, Uncle Jack warned John and Pat, “The President and Congress are thinkin’ about a draft. Maybe you should join one of them regiments being formed in Buffalo. The papers say if you’re drafted you won’t get any bonus money.” Both boys had seen advertisements for sign-up bonuses of $500.

Pat quit his job with the diocese in a dispute with his supervisor. He resented taking orders from a man he considered a puffed-up fool who knew less than he did about maintaining buildings and grounds. Pat exploded when a job cleaning a classroom took twice as long and was made twice as difficult by the supervisor’s stupidity. He walked off before he punched the man in the head.

When the bishop heard about it, he expressed his disappointment to Maire. He worried that Pat would join the saloon crowd after work. Maire agreed, but had no comment. She knew Pat had never left his mates at Kennedy’s. He was there almost whenever he wasn’t working. Still, he was a man now, working full time and giving her most of what he earned every week. What he did on his time, she believed, was none of her business.

On the day Pat quit, he hired on at the Union Iron Works on Catherine Street in the Ward as an unskilled laborer raking slag from the first of three blast furnaces to be built, called the Pioneer. The work was dirty, long—sixty-six hours a week—and exhausting. It paid $2 a day, one of the highest paid jobs for unskilled labor anywhere in Buffalo.

His first day on the job, the emergency wagon ran down Louisiana as Maire was chatting with Carrie Duggan, a neighbor. The women stopped talking in mid-sentence and gaped as the ambulance clanged past and turned left on South. They listened to it rumble on for a few blocks to what they knew was the Iron Works. “Oh, Carrie, that place’ll be the death of Pat if it isn’t him the wagon’s loadin’ on his first day.”

Gram hurried to the corner of Tecumseh to trade news with other women who gathered wondering if it was their man the wagon bore away. When the men exited the gate about noon, they brought word it was young Joe McNamara who was burned when something exploded into his chest from Furnace Number Two.

When Pat came home shortly after 6:30, Gram hugged him like he was a long-lost relative just arrived from Ireland. “Gram, what’s with this crushin’ me bones? And now look at ye, you’re filthy as one of the men from the Iron Works.” Then Pat turned serious for a moment as they talked about the Iron Works and Joe McNamara.

Dinner was a roast of beef and creamed green beans. “Gram, what day is this? Did I work through a Sunday, missin’ mass? Sure, I must’a.” He liked to imitate his grandmother’s speech. She laughed. She enjoyed being teased by her grandson. Jack laughed as well and relished the surprise of Sunday dinner on a weekday.

John, Pat, and PM began attending rallies of various prominent Buffalonians who were forming regiments and recruiting volunteers.

On August 15, Colonel Michael Corcoran was released from Confederate prison. Fighting with the New York 69th, he had been captured at the First Battle of Bull Run thirteen months earlier. He remained in prison more than a year refusing parole, because it required signing an oath never again to fight against the Confederacy. Four days after release, he was at the War Department in Washington where he was promoted to brigadier general and authorized to raise a brigade of New York volunteers. Within a week, word was on the streets of the Ward that Corcoran had asked Buffalo attorney John McMahon to form a regiment of Buffalo Irish.

John met his brother at Kennedy’s after work. “Are you interested, Pat? The poster at Hacker’s Grocery Store advertised a rally recruiting young men to serve in a new Irish regiment. They’re offering bonuses from the state and local governments, including 160 acres.”

“I’d turn my bonuses over to Gram,” bragged Pat, “so she could slow down a little and maybe do her sewing just for Bishop Timon. I like the idea of getting 160 acres. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a place in the country just to get away from all the dirt and crime of this place?”

John, Pat, and PM, along with 500 men mostly from the Ward, attended two raucous rallies held in a Main Street hotel theater. They drank free beer and listened to John McMahon and Hugh Mooney exhort them in the name of all the saints of Ireland to join up. Afterward, the three went to PM’s house and stood around the backyard, discussing what they had heard and seen.

“Every meeting so far,” groused John, “is green with Irish bullshit, which as we know is brown and smells like everyone else’s. Look at what I picked up at this last one.” He showed Pat and PM a brochure whose cover read in large capital letters:

TO ARMS! TO ARMS!

ONWARD THE GREEN BANNER REARING,

GO FLESH EVERY SWORD TO THE HILT.

ON OUR SIDE IS VIRTUE AND ERIN,

ON THEIRS IS THE SAXON AND GUILT.”

“I’m not volunteering for the money or because of some Irish crap. I’m in as long as the president needs me. Are you with me, Pat, PM?”

“I am,” said PM. “The Union has to be saved or we Irish go down with it.” Pat nodded in agreement.

On their last night home before enlisting and being assigned, Maire invited John and Theresa for dinner. Afterward she asked the boys to help her doing dishes. Theresa joined them.

“Boys, I’m hearin’ there’s not a paper that doesn’t list men from Buffalo dying in the war. Lots of them from disease, so your uncle tells me, more than are shot. Wash your hands before eatin’. And stick with Mr. Tipping. He’ll get you through if anyone can. Don’t forget. Say your prayers morning and night. It’s the Good Lord who will protect you.”

With that, she threw her arms around the two of them and hugged them till they felt glued together.

Pat laughed, “Hold on, Gram, we haven’t even made it through Camp Porter. We’re some time before seein’ the first rebel and I promise you, I’ll shoot the first one I see and send his buttons home to ye. You can sew them on the bishop’s cassock.”

They all laughed. Theresa asked them to stay as far out of harm’s way as possible. “We want you home with us,” she said. “I’ll be sayin’a rosary a day until you come home safe.”

John and Pat joined 500 men, mostly from the Ward, in the 3rd Regiment of the Corcoran Legion on August 27 and were stationed at Fort Porter near the Niagara River. They could walk home in less than an hour.

During the six weeks they trained, the regiment was housed in ten sixty-by-eighteen-foot barracks at the fort. Fort Porter covered five acres on which a square masonry redoubt had been constructed between 1841 and 1843, with crenelated walls surrounded by large earthworks and a moat. It was bounded by Porter and Busti Avenues and the Erie Canal. From the redoubt, one could look west to the juncture of Lake Erie and the Niagara River, a mile north of Buffalo’s expanding downtown, one of the more scenic views in the area.

Training was overseen by captains and lieutenants at the company level, who barked orders to sergeants from new manuals they held before them. The training consisted of marching with stick-rifles in hand in columns four abreast, turning left or right while maintaining orderly rows; quick marches at double time; physical exercises to build up strength and endurance; and once a week a ten-mile hike north to a firing range in the far reaches of Amherst. There the men broke down and practiced firing Enfield and Springfield rifles. Fatigue duty each day included policing grounds, cleaning latrines, serving and cleaning up after meals, and rebuilding parts of the fort’s buildings and walls that had fallen into disrepair.

On October 10, the 3rd Regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel John McMahon, staged a departure ceremony, long on speeches. Pat, John, and PM were eager to get going. No high rhetoric, no matter how brilliant, could have held their attention. As soon as the ceremony ended, the regiment scattered gathering about their families and close friends. Maire had only one extra rosary. She shoved a small black leather bag containing the rosary into Pat’s jacket pocket. She thought he needed it more than John.

John and Pat charily hugged Gram, Theresa, and Jack again. They knew they had to leave them and they wanted no further leave-taking. A handful of city officials and interested citizens watched and talked among themselves before dispersing.

After what seemed like a day of agony standing around and then saying good-bye to families, the 3rd Regiment marched two miles from Fort Porter to the New York Central Exchange Street Station in a column four abreast. Four hundred, including John and Pat, crowded into ten cars, chartered by the state at the behest of General Corcoran. Amenities included only padded benches and two coal-burning stoves per car.

The Central ran a series of roads between Buffalo and Albany, not as yet organized into a single system. Altogether, it was a twenty-hour, uncomfortable, constantly interrupted trip. The land between Buffalo and Albany was flat and dreary until they reached the Mohawk Valley. The men of the regiment slept whenever smoother rail sections allowed. They disembarked at Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica to eat sandwiches and gulp down nickel beers in restaurants close to the depots.

At Albany, they embarked on a steamer that sailed down the Hudson River to Staten Island and Camp Scott, a farm commandeered by the state at the start of the war. Sibley tents spread across gently rolling hills with only sparse green trees and bushes to break up the monotonous sea of white. The camp was sectioned off by regiment and further divided into companies. Pat and John settled into one of the conical tents with four other men before being ordered to the parade grounds.

After a day installing gear in tents, being assigned officers, and doing light fatigue duty, training began in earnest the next day, October 13. There was some excitement at the end of drill that first afternoon, as the men were issued 1858 muzzle-loading .58 caliber Springfield rifles without ammunition. With ramrods, the rifles weighed nine pounds. They also received kepi caps, wool uniforms, flannel underwear, two pair of socks, and boots to replace the hodgepodge of clothing worn at Fort Porter. Next came a cartridge box to be strapped over the left shoulder and under the waist belt on the right hip, a bayonet and scabbard, a haversack for rations, a canteen, and a knapsack containing half a pup tent and a gum blanket.

A Union soldier fully equipped carried an extra forty-five to fifty pounds, putting him at a decided disadvantage with his Southern cousins, who bore no more than twenty pounds and were therefore faster and more agile afoot.

A company consisted of 100 men with five first sergeants, each assigned a squad of twenty men.

George Tipping was a sergeant in Company I, comprised of men from Buffalo, including John and Pat. Older at age thirty-five, a quick study, and from the Ward, he had earned the respect of the men in his squad at Fort Porter. He studied the manual thoroughly beforehand and drilled his squad into superior shape and military precision.

While at Fort Porter, Pat resented the rigorous drills imposed on their squad by Tipping, but at Camp Scott, he realized he was in better shape than most recruits thanks to Tipping. Above all, he noted to John, Tipping was fair in making work assignments and meting out military discipline.

Hugh Mooney was the company’s second lieutenant. He managed a tavern and inn on Ohio Street in the Ward, and had a good sense of what it took to maintain an organization. Like Tipping, he spent most of his time among his men, many of whom he had grown up with. He was one of them and did every company drill with them.

Corcoran assigned a first lieutenant, James Worthington, to Company I. He was a New Yorker and held himself aloof from the company.

The captain of Company I, John Byrne, a native Buffalonian, did little but parade around in his dress blues.

None of the regiment’s officers, commissioned or non-commissioned, had any formal military training, let alone battle experience.

New York State ordered General Corcoran, given the undersized units in his command, to reorganize his brigade into full-sized regiments and companies. Word of Corcoran’s reorganization plan leaked out before he implemented it. Buffalo Companies I and K were to be joined with New York City companies to form the 155th Regiment. Fights broke out between Buffalo and New York companies, who were just as unhappy with the reorganization.

Though smaller than many of the men, Pat surged about the camp with five of his pals from the Ward, looking for New Yorkers to attack. They did not have to go far, as units were grouped side by side. Pat surprised a burly sergeant from Brooklyn. Without a word, he suddenly leaned forward and plowed a shoulder into his stomach. The fight was on. A circle of soldiers from both cities formed around them and yelled encouragement to their native sons.

Shouts went up from New Yorkers: “Bash his fekkin head in, Sarge.” “Kick his ass.” “Crush ‘im, Sarge.” From Buffalo men: “Show ‘em the ground, Pat.” “Bloody the bastard.” The New Yorker swung the butt end of his rifle at Pat’s skull. Pat ducked and dove forward into the sergeant’s mid-section. The man settled onto his backside, gasping for breath. “Now you got ‘em, Patty boy,” yelled PM, who was standing closest to the fight to make sure no New Yorker attacked Pat’s unguarded back.

Pat was on the sergeant so fast that all the man could do was cover his face with his hands. Pat kicked him in the groin with his right foot. The sergeant doubled up, bringing his hands down. As if executing a mortally wounded enemy, Pat drew his right hand to his shoulder and smashed him in the left temple. The man slumped back, unconscious.

Once the sergeant crumbled to the ground, the conflict gained momentum and became a general brawl. Four companies of men were kicking, punching, and swinging guns, tree limbs, and shovels, whatever they could grab. Pat waved his cap, urging his fellow Buffalonians to fight on. He himself watched, laughing atop the fallen sergeant.

John was on campsite cleanup duty when the melee erupted. He ran over and pulled his brother off the sergeant just as an armed provost marshal battalion raced in to restore order. Many of the 155th spent the night in the brig. The one who had a hand starting it all spent the evening joking, playing cards, telling stories, and drinking beer.

The Legion remained in Camp Scott for four weeks under the shadow of reorganization. Officers kept the men separated by company and busy rebuilding barracks and wharves. They did very little military training.

Meanwhile, the man who would determine the fate of the Corcoran Brigade, also called the Corcoran Legion, was sitting in Norfolk, 400 miles south. Major General John Adams Dix, commanding officer of coastal Virginia, prevailed upon Henry W. Halleck, general-in-chief of the Federal armies, to send him additional troops to counter a possible attack by a much larger Confederate force. Halleck ordered several brigades, including the Corcoran Legion, to join Dix’s small force of less than 10,000 men.