The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest of the Civil War and more Americans fell on September 17th, 1862, than on any other day in the military history of the US. Not surprisingly the Irish were there in force on both sides.
Hundreds of Irish-Americans also turned out for the ceremony last Saturday to honour the exploits of the Irish Brigade which fought on the Union side at Antietam. The 10-foot high monument of Wicklow granite and bronze commemorating the brigade will be the last to be erected on the battlefield, and how this came about is a story in itself.
The small plaque which used to commemorate the Irish Brigade was vandalised over a decade ago and two men visiting the site pledged to have a proper monument erected. For 11 years, Matthew Hannon and Jack 0'Brien, both of Irish ancestry and now living in Maryland not far from the battlefield, fought their own battles against the bureaucracy and raised funds to honour the men who took part in the fighting at Bloody Lane.
Over one-third of the 1,400 Irish soldiers in the brigade, most of them recent emigrants, were killed and wounded as they attacked the North Carolina regiments, well dug in at a sunken road dividing cornfields. Overall, there were 5,000 casualties that day at what came to be called Bloody Lane.
Last Saturday, they were prayed for at a Mass on the site said by Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of the US army chaplaincy. Generals spoke, honour guards performed, historians recalled the deeds of that day 132 years ago and the new Irish Ambassador, Mr Sean O hUiginn, unveiled the memorial.
As the Last Post sounded from the top of the battlefield's memorial tower, everyone in the large crowd on that grey October day must have felt that the young Irishmen who had died there were fittingly remembered.
The Irish Brigade under Thomas Francis Meagher, an 1848 rebel from Waterford, had a distinguished history in the Civil War. With its reputation for bravery under fire, it was used for the most dangerous assaults in the battles against Robert E. Lee's Confederate armies and paid a heavy price.
Its most famous regiment was the "Fighting 69th" from New York. Two other New York regiments (63rd and 88th) and the 29th Massachusetts made up the brigade that day. The green silk flag of the brigade became famous. Those who carried it became prime targets of Confederate sharpshooters.
One of these battle-scarred flags hangs in Leinster House, where it was handed over by President John F. Kennedy during his 1963 visit. It was fitting that his brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, used his considerable political influence to have an exception made for the Irish Brigade when a ban was imposed on new monuments at Antietam.
While the bravery of the Irish who fought in the Civil War is widely acknowledged, there has always been debate about their motives. As most of them had recently escaped from oppression in Ireland, it is assumed that those who fought in their new land were inspired by the ideals of freedom and democracy, and the speeches last Saturday made reference to these ideals.
But when Antietam was fought, it was still not clear that the war was about freedom for slaves in the Confederate south. President Abraham Lincoln was sending armies into battle to preserve the Union from the threat posed by the secession of the southern states but he had not yet proclaimed the end of slavery.
Antietam did not produce an outright victory for either side but it did force Lee to withdraw back to Virginia and emboldened Lincoln to make the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves but only in the secession states. Slaves in states which had not seceded, such as Maryland and Kentucky, were not freed.
The reason was that Lincoln, before the war started, had conceded that slavery was an internal matter for the states. The war had broken out because Lincoln and his federal government had forbidden the extension of slavery to the western territories and this had led the slave states to revolt.
For the Irish, who were generally poor labourers, the freeing of slaves and their arrival in northern cities like New York was not necessarily welcome. The ex-slaves competed for scarce jobs, were ready to accept lower pay and helped to break a strike of Irish dockers and were seen as "scabs".
Some eight months after Antietam, the notorious "draft riots" broke out in New York and angry Irish went on a rampage which resulted in the lynching of blacks. The Irish were infuriated by Lincoln's draft law which would conscript those who could not buy their way out of military service by paying $300, or half the annual pay of a labourer.
Up to now the soldiers of the Irish Brigade had been volunteers, who wanted to fight, whether for patriotic or economic reasons, but probably not for the abolition of slavery. The combination of pressure from the ex-slaves for work and the draft discriminating against the poorer Irish sparked off some of the worst rioting seen in northern cities.
Meanwhile, the proud Meagher of the Sword was resisting efforts to disband the Irish Brigade because of its heavy losses. He resigned in protest in May 1863 and although his resignation was refused, he never served again with the brigade. It was disbanded in June 1864 and the valiant New York regiments were transferred to another brigade.