THE battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in mid-December, 1862, between Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E Lee’s army of North Virginia was one of the bloodiest encounters of the American civil war.
If Burnside could overcome the Confederates, he’d have been on course to capture Richmond, the Southern capital, and the war would have been shortened.
On December 13th, the Union army attempted to capture ridges known as Marye’s Heights, but the Confederates had the advantage of easily defended positions, including a wall. When the assaults failed, Burnside ordered his men to retreat across the Rappohannock river and sought a truce from Lee to recover the wounded and the bodies of the dead. By then, 1,900 men had died and about 14,000 were wounded, with two thirds of the losses on the Union side.
Among the northern soldiers were 1,200 members of Thomas Francis Meagher’s Irish Brigade, Irishmen recruited in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and the section of the Heights that they assaulted was defended by the 24th Georgia Volunteers, part of Cobb’s Brigade, a regiment that also contained a large number of Irishmen and was commanded by Col Robert McMillan from Co Antrim.
McMillan’s men knew that they were facing “Meagher’s boys” and some were reluctant to fire. But he was implacable. “It’s Greek to Greek today”, he is reputed to have said, “give them hell”. And they did. When rations were issued that night, only 200 men claimed them.
Lee’s No 2, Gen James Longstreet, who had observed their six desperate charges described their bravery as “one of the handsomest things in the war”.
On the night after the battle, according to a New York newspaper, The Irish People, a Capt Downing sang his favourite piece, The Song from the Backwoods, to cheer up the men whose spirits were dampened by the loss of so many comrades: "Deep in Canadian woods we've met, /From one bright island flown; /Great is the land we thread, but yet/ Our hearts are with our own./And ere we leave this shanty small,/ While fades the autumn day! /We'll toast old Ireland, Dear old Ireland! Ireland! boys, Hurrah!"
According to the newspaper, the song was then taken up by the regiment, by the division and by the entire line of the Union army for six miles along the river and then like an echo by the Confederate lines on the opposite bank: “We’ve heard her faults a hundred times, /The new ones and the old, /In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes, /Enlarged some fifty-fold./But take them all, the great and small, And this we’ve got to say: Here’s dear old Ireland! Good old Ireland! Ireland! boys, Hurrah!”. The story was believed by the author, TD Sullivan and it’s credible because 10 per cent of the two million soldiers were Irish or of Irish descent.
Denis Downing was one of four brothers from Skibbereen who fought in the war. He had emigrated in November 1860 after being briefly jailed for membership of the IRB and joined the 42nd New York Infantry.
He would lose a leg at Gettysburg on July 1st, 1863 and would be transferred to the Veterans Reserve. On July 7th, 1865, he would assist at the execution of Mary Surratt, the first woman hanged by the Federal government, and three men for conspiring to murder Abraham Lincoln.
Sullivan, a journalist and an MP, also wrote God Save Ireland, an anthem of nationalist Ireland until 1916.
Canadian Woodsor Dear Old Irelandas it was also known had the same air as an English temperance song, We'll Never Get Drunk Again, and, if I'm not mistaken, a Christmas carol. He published it in The Nation, in August 1857.
He was one of the MPs from west Cork, including his brother Alexander and their cousin William Martin Murphy, who became known as the Bantry Band, and a forefather of one of Ireland’s political dynasties. His nephew Tim Healy, who broke with Parnell and famously asked “who is the mistress of the Irish Party” became the first governor general of the Irish Free State, a grandson, Kevin O’Higgins, became a minister for justice and was assassinated in 1927, another, Kevin’s brother, MF and two of MF’s sons, Tom and Michael became Fine Gael TDs. Tom also became a minister for health and a chief justice.
Canadian Woodswas sung again by the men of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in Northern France during the retreat from Mons in 1914, when their officers told them to stop singing "rebelly" songs.
Later, it became the name of a race horse in the 1940s and a greyhound in the 1950s.
In the 1960s, it was sung in a less bloody context. In the TG4 history of Irish rugby, Gualainn le Gualainn,Ray McLaughlin recalled that on the day before an international match the Ireland team would sing it after some light training and then go to the pictures.
It has been recorded by many artists. Some of its sentiments are out of date and emigration is not a final break from home any more.
But, when confident young Irish men and women meet around the world this Christmastime, they may spare a thought for the exiles of past generations for whom there was no way back: “But deep in Canadian woods, we’ve met, /And we never may see again /The dear old isle where our hearts are set, /And our first fond hopes remain! /But come, fill up another cup; /And with every sup let’s say – /Here’s lov’d old Ireland! Good Old Ireland! Ireland! boys, Hurrah!”