“Lions of Little Round Top, July 2nd 1863″

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War.

The regiment’s sudden, desperate bayonet charge blunted the Confederate assault on Little Round Top and has been credited with saving Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac, winning the Battle of Gettysburg and setting the South on a long, irreversible path to defeat.

One of my favorite paintings of the AmRev period is probably Don Troiani’s “Victory or Death, Advance on Trenton,” where Captain Hamilton and his men are depicted in the foreground pushing their cannons along the march to the Hessian garrison at Trenton.

1781 10 19 Yorktown surrender - Don Troiani

 "the garrison of York will march out to a place to be appointed in front of the posts, at two o'clock precisely, with shouldered arms, colors cased, and drums beating a British or German march. They are then to ground their arms, and return to their encampments, where they will remain until they are dispatched to the places of their destination."

Organized in 1861 shortly after First Bull Run, The Irish Brigade’s nucleus was the 63d, 69th, and 88th New York Infantry. In the fall of 1862 the 28th Massachusetts and the 116th Pennsylvania were added, and the 29th Massachusetts served with it for a short time. It saw action in the Peninsular Campaign, at Antietam, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Cedar Run, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, in the 1st Division of the II Corps. Reorganized in November 1864, with the 7th New York Heavy Artillery replacing the 116th Pennsylvania, it was by then no longer the old organization and certainly could not be truthfully designated the Irish Brigade. It had suffered over 4,000 casualties in killed and wounded, a total which exceeded the number of men enrolled in it at any given time.

Of the five men who commanded the Irish Brigade, three were killed and the other two wounded. Colonel Richard Byrne was mortally wounded at Cold Harbor; Colonel Patrick Kelly was killed at Petersburg; Major General Thomas A. Smyth died at Farmville; and Brigadier Generals Robert Nugent and Thomas Meagher were both wounded.

The most colorful and flamboyant of its leaders was the original commander and organizer, General Thomas Francis Meagher. Born in County Waterford, Ireland in 1823, he was described as ‘the counterpart of some rash, impolitic, poetic personage from Irish poetry or fiction.’ Son of a wealthy merchant, he was an active disciple of Irish liberty and participated in the various independence movements. In 1845 the British exiled him to Tasmania. Three years later he escaped and eventually made his way to New York City. At various times a lawyer, lecturer, newspaper editor, and politician, his flaming oratory had made him a favorite of the ‘Young Ireland’ group and he soon became the political leader of the Irish element in New York. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised a Zouave company and commanded it at First Bull Run as part of the 69th New York State Militia. That winter he organized the Irish Brigade and President Lincoln appointed him brigadier general of Volunteers in February 1862. (x) 

The Fighting 69th by Mort Kunstler (x)

Fight’n Irish by Dale Gallon (x)

Raise the Colors and Follow Me! by Mort Kunstler (x)

Jul 15 1918 Pennsylvania National Guard 28th Division was up against Imperial German Army's Champagne-Marne Offensive. The 109th Infantry Reg was christened "Men of Iron" for their actions #OTD. 28th was later dubbed "Iron Division"