great and renowned figure. His parents came from Ireland, and Charles Stewart Parnell's mother was the great sea-fighter's daughter. Lieutenant Stephen Cassin commanded the Ticonderoga and fought her well. Captain Johnston Blakely, who was born in Ireland, captured in the Wasp of 18 guns the much larger British Reindeer of 20 guns and 175 men in a splendid fight, and later sank the Avon, an 18-gun brig. After capturing a great prize, which he sent to Savannah, he sailed for the Spanish main and was never heard of more. Captain Boyle, in the privateer Comet of Baltimore, fought the Hibernia, of 18 guns, and later in the Chasseur, known as the phantom ship, so fast she sailed, took eighty prizes on the high seas. General A. E. Maccomb, who commanded victoriously at Plattsburg, was of Irish descent, and Colonel Robert Carr, who distinguished himself in the same campaign, was born in Ireland. Major George Croghan of Kentucky, the hero of Fort Stephenson, was the son of an Irish father who had been a soldier in the Revolution. Colonel Hugh Brady, of the 22nd Infantry, commanded at Niagara. He remained in the army and fought in Mexico. William McRee, of Irish descent, was General Browne's chief engineer in laying out the military works of the American army at Niagara.

Let it not be forgotten that in this memorable company brave Mrs. Doyle has a place. Her husband, Patrick Doyle, an Irish artilleryman, had been taken prisoner by the British in the affair at Queenston and had been refused a parole. Accordingly, when the guns were trained on the English lines before Fort Niagara, Mary, emulating the example of her countrywoman, "Molly" Pitcher, at Monmouth, determined to take her husband's place, and, regardless of flying British balls, tended a blacksmith's bellows all day, providing red-hot shot for the American gun battery, and sending a prayer with every shot into the British lines.

After the Queenston affair, it is well to note, the English doctrine of perpetual allegiance was abated. Twenty-three Irish-born men were among the captives of the English in that engagement. They were manacled to be sent to Ireland to be tried for treason, not as enemies taken in the field. Winfield Scott, then lieutenant-colonel, was also a prisoner with them.

He protested loudly against this infamous course. Upon his release he laid aside twenty-three British prisoners to be treated like the Irishmen, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. As a result, the Irish prisoners were exchanged.

Colonel John Allen, who fell at the head of the First Regiment of Kentucky Riflemen at the battle of the river Raisin on January 21, 1813, was one of the Irish Allens of Kentucky. His father and mother were natives of Ireland.

The Mexican War (1846-48) again showed Irish valor at the front. It was not a great war, though brilliantly fought and rich in territorial accessions. The campaigning comprised the work of two main expeditions and a subsidiary movement in California. One column, under General Zachary Taylor, penetrated northern Mexico and fought the battles of Matamoras, Palo Alto, and Resaca de la Palma, in May, 1846, with a force of 2,200 men; forced the evacuation of Monterey in September, his army swelled to 5,000; and defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista in February, 1847. General Winfield Scott, with a naval expediton, attacked Vera Cruz from the sea in March, 1847, and took up the march, 13,000 strong, to Mexico City, fighting the battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, and entered Mexico City on September 14. General James Shields, born in Tyrone, Ireland, in 1810, was in command with his brigade under Scott. A brilliant soldier, he was severely wounded at Cerro Gordo and again at Chapultepec. He served as United States Senator after the war and again took the field in the Civil War, his forces defeating Stonewall Jackson at the first battle of Winchester in 1862. The glamour of chivalry lights the name of Phil Kearney. Here was a born soldier. He was a volunteer with the French in Algiers in 1839-40. He also commanded under Scott with brilliant bravery, and was brevetted major on the field for "gallant and meritorious conduct" at the battles of Contreras and Churubusco. In the French war with Austria in 1859-60, Kearney fought with the French, distinguishing himself at the decisive and bloody battle of Solferino. In the Civil War he was brigadier-general of New Jersey troops in 1861 and major-general in 1862, taking distinguished part in the bat

tles of the Peninsula and second Bull Run, and was killed while reconnoitring at Chantilly. General Stephen W. Kearney, with the Army of the West, by dint of long marches, secured California among the fruits of the war. General Bennet Riley, born in Maryland of Irish ancestry, commanded a brigade at Contreras, making a wonderful charge, and also fought brilliantly at Cerro Gordo and Churubusco, and was brevetted brigadier-general. He attained the army rank in 1858. Major-General William O. Butler, under Zachary Taylor, was one of the heroes of Monterey. Born in Kentucky, son of Percival Butler of Kilkenny, who was one of the famous five Butler brothers of the Revolutionary War whom Washington once toasted as "The Butlers and their five sons," General Butler succeeded General Scott in command of the entire American army in Mexico in February, 1848. Another of clear Irish descent who fought under Zachary Taylor was Major-General George Croghan, whose father, born in Sligo, Ireland, had fought in the Revolution. He himself took part, as we have seen, in the War of 1812, and now was at the front before Monterey. Once, when a Tennessee regiment wavered under a hot converging fire, Croghan rushed to the front and, taking off his hat, shouted, "Men of Tennessee, your fathers conquered with Jackson at New Orleans. Come, follow me!" and they followed in a successful assault. Major-General Robert Paterson, who was born at Strabane, Ireland, and was the son of a '98 man, saw service in 1812, and became major-general of militia in Pennsylvania, whence he went to the Mexican War. He also lived to serve in the War of the States.

Among Irish-named officers mentioned honorably in official despatches are Major Edward H. Fitzgerald, Major Patrick J. O'Brien; Captain Casey, chosen to lead the first storming party at Chapultepec; Captains Hogan, Byrne, Kane, McElvin, McGill, Burke, Barny, O'Sullivan, McCarthy, McGarry, and McKeon. Captain Mayne Reid, the novelist, a native of Ireland, was in the storming of Chapultepec. Theodore O'Hara, the poet, served with the Kentucky troops and was brevetted major for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, while on the staff of General Franklin Pierce (after

wards President of the United States). O'Hara's magnificent poem, "The Bivouac of the Dead," has made his name immortal. It was written on the occasion of the interment at Frankfort, Ky., of the Kentucky dead of the Mexican War, where

"Glory guards with solemn round

The bivouac of the dead."

Irwin C. McDowell, who was brevetted captain at Buena Vista, commanded a corps in the Civil War. George A. McCall, brevetted lieutenant-colonel at Palo Alto, was a majorgeneral in the Civil War. Francis T. Bryan was a hero of Buena Vista. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas P. Moore and Captain James Hogan both won fame in the 3rd Dragoons. Lieutenant Thomas Claiborn of the Mounted Rifles became a colonel in the Confederate Army. Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. Geary fought brilliantly and was to be heard from later with

renown.

Colonel John F. Reynolds of the 3rd Artillery lived to be major-general in the Civil War, and to fall gloriously at Gettysburg. Nor must we forget Major Folliot Lally's bravery at Cerro Gordo; Second Lieutenant Thomas W. Sweeny, a brigadier-general of the Civil War and the planner of the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866; Lieutenant Henry B. Kelly of the 2nd Infantry, afterwards a Confederate colonel; Captain Martin Burke of the 1st Artillery, killed at Churubusco; nor Lieutenant William F. Barry of the 2nd Artillery, a brigadier-general in the Civil War. There were scores of other Irish named officers. In the whole American force of 30,000 engaged, the Irish born and Irish descended troops of all arms were numbered by thousands.

It was, however, in the Civil War that the flood of Irish valor and loyalty to the American Republic was at its height. The 2,800,000 enlistments on the Northern side stood probably for 1,800,000 individual soldiers serving during the four years of the war. Not less than 40 per cent. of these were Irish born or of Irish descent. Of the 337,800 men furnished by the State of New York, 51,206 were natives of Ireland out of the total of 134,178 foreign born, or 38 per cent. of the latter, while not less than 80,000 of Irish descent figured among the

203,600 native born soldiers. Of the 2,261 engagements in the war, few there were that saw no Irishmen in arms, and certainly, in every one of the 519 engagements that made Virginia a great graveyard, the Irish figured largely. Of the 1,000,516 mustered out in 1865, not less than 150,000 were natives of Ireland, while those of Irish descent numbered hundreds of thousands. They fought well everywhere, and it would require volumes to give the names and deeds of those who distinguished themselves more than their fellows.

One name, however, shines with a great blaze above them all, the name of Philip H. Sheridan, one of the three supreme soldiers of the Union, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman being the others. Had Ireland furnished only Sheridan to the Union cause, her service would be beyond reward. He was born in Albany, N. Y., in March, 1831, the year after his parents, John and Mary Sheridan, arrived there from the Co. Cavan, in Ireland. The family moved to Somerset, Perry Co., Ohio, the following year. There Philip began village life. How he gained the beginning of an education; worked in a grocery store; became a bookkeeper; longed for a West Point nomination and got it; how he worked through the Academy in 1853; served as lieutenant on the frontier, in Texas, Čalifornia, and Oregon, until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he was promoted captain and ordered east, can be quickly told. His history until the fall of the Confederacy would need many long chapters. His military genius included all the requirements of a great captain, and his opportunties of exhibiting all his qualities in action came in rapid succession. In every service from quartermaster to army commander his talents shone. His tremendous vigor, incredible mental alertness, and genius for detail, added to his skill and outreach, continually set him forward. He stood 5 feet 5 inches high, but somehow looked taller, owing to his erect, splendid bearing. There was something in the full chest, the thick muscular neck, the heavy head, the dark blazing eyes, and the quick bodily movements that arrested attention. His name has come down to this generation mainly as a great cavalry leader, but he was a natural commander of all arms, a great tactician, a born strategist. His campaign of