General James T. Boyle, of the Army of the Ohio under Buell, was the brave man whose promotion to division commander left a vacancy for “Little Phil”, that was to be an immediate stepping stone to higher opportunity.  Brigadier-General McMillan, who commanded the second brigide at Cedar Creek; Colonel Thomas W. Cahill, 9th Connecticut; Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Neafie of the 156th New York; Captain Charles McCarthy of the 175th New York; Lieutenant-Colonel Alex.  J. Kenny of the 8th Indiana; Lieutenant Terrence Reilly of the Horse Artillery, all won distinction in the Shenandoah Valley.  Such splendid fighters as General James R. O’Beirne, Colonel Guiney, Colonel Cavanagh, Colonel John P. Byron, Colonel Patrick Gleason, General Denis F. Burke, wrote their names red over a score of battle fields, but one cannot hope to cover more than a fraction of the brilliant men of Irish blood who led and bled in the long, hard, and strenuous struggle.  The 69th New York Regiment was the mother of a dozen Irish regiments, including the Irish Brigade of Meagher and the Corcoran Legion.  The 9th, 28th, and 29th regiments of Massachusetts were all Irish.  A gallant Irishman, born at Fermoy, was Brigadier-General Thomas Smyth, who made a name and died in the battles around Richmond.  There was not a regiment from the middle western and western States that did not hold its quota of Irishmen and sons of the Irish.  After the names of Porter and Farragut in the Navy stands next highest in honor that of Vice-Admiral Stephen C. Rowan, born in Dublin, of the famous family that produced Hamilton Rowan, one of the foremost of the United Irishmen.  It was the son of the vice-admiral, a lieutenant in the army, who carried “the message to Garcia” from the United States War Department to the Cuban commander in the eastern jungle of Cuba, before the outbreak of the war with Spain, and did it so well and bravely through such difficulties and dangers that his name will stand for “the faithful messenger” forever.

As a consequence of their stand with the American people in the Civil War, the position of the whole mass of the Irish and Irish-American people was vastly uplifted in American eyes.  The unlettered poverty of scores of thousands of Irish immigrants, who came in multitudes from 1846 on, had made an unfavorable and false impression; their red blood on the battle field washed it out.

On the southern side as well, Irish valor shone.  While the great flood of the mid-century Irish immigration had spread itself mainly north, east, and west, the larger cities of the South also received a share.  The slave system precluded the entry of free labor into the cotton, corn, lumber, and sugar lands of the South, but such cities as New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, Vicksburg, and Richmond gave varied employment to many of the Irish who made their homes in the Southland, and so they came to furnish thousands of recruits to the local Confederate levies.