by Niall O'Dowd
The war intervened, and Corcoran rode off in a blaze of glory but was captured at the First Battle of Bull Run. Undaunted, he wrote from his prison cell, “One half of my heart is Erin’s, and the other half is America’s. God bless America, and ever preserve her the asylum of all the oppressed of the earth, is the sincere prayer of my heart.”
After he was released as part of a prisoner exchange in 1862, he was invited to dine with Lincoln and begged him for a new command. He drew the biggest crowd of Irish ever assembled when he returned to New York a free man. His legend had only spread by his bravery at Bull Run and subsequently as a prisoner where he refused to be exchanged unless his men were, too.
With Lincoln’s direct permission he formed Corcoran’s Legion; the equivalent of six regiments signed up for him. They fought bravely and successfully in several key battles. “Never Retreated, Never Defeated” was their battle cry.
Alas, his life was cut short at age thirty-six when he fell off a high-strung horse (although some claimed he suffered a heart attack first) on December 22, 1863 in Fairfax, Virginia, where he was the commanding general. He was returning home to his house in Virginia, after accompanying Thomas Francis Meagher, who was headed to New York, to the train station. Meagher was due to pick up their wives and return with them to Virginia, and join Corcoran for the Christmas vacations.
Meagher was inconsolable. “There, in that very room I had occupied for several days as his guest … he lay cold and white in death, with the hands that were once so warm in their grasp, and so lavish in their gifts crossed up on his breast.”
The task of helping Lincoln win the Civil War had just gotten much tougher.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lincoln’s Unexpected Heroes
The Transgender Hero
Clogherhead, County Louth, seems an unlikely place for an incredible aspect of American Civil War history to come from.
Abraham Lincoln’s most famous transgender soldier and supporter hailed from the little hamlet. An estimated 400 women served as male soldiers in the Civil War, but only one, it seems, Albert Cashier, a.k.a. Jennie Hodgers from Clogherhead, spent her entire life as a man, unlike the others, who stepped back into their old identities.
Her story, from immigrant to hero soldier, to a life as a man, would be unbelievable even as a Hollywood fable.
She was the most exotic person to ever emerge from the little Irish fishing village which, while quaint, is not well known as a popular destination. Indeed, the nearby town of Drogheda, which Oliver Cromwell sacked, carries most of the weight of local history.
But something extraordinary did happen in Clogherhead with the birth of Jennie Hodgers on Christmas Day, 1843.
From an early age, though illiterate, Jennie planned a life away from grim pre-Famine Ireland.
Jennie left the Old World behind and shed her old identity to sail as a stowaway dressed in man’s clothes to America. When she reached America, it has been posited that a male relative dressed her as a boy to get her a job working in a shoe factory, where the workforce was all male.
She arrived just as the Civil War broke out, and Abraham Lincoln had recently called for three hundred thousand volunteers. Jennie changed her name to Albert Cashier and volunteered for the 95th Infantry Illinois. She knew the medical exam merely looked at hands and feet, and an illiterate person could sign up.
She joined the Union army on August 6, 1862. At five foot three and slight in build, she ran the risk of discovery. Somehow she passed, and obviously whatever medical examination occurred was cursory.
She was soon in the thick of the fight. Her regiment took part in forty engagements, including the critical siege at Vicksburg masterminded by General Ulysses S. Grant, which proved a turning point in the war. She also took part in the battle of Guntown, Mississippi, where they suffered heavy losses.
She was captured while on a reconnaissance mission in Vicksburg. She managed to grab her captor’s gun and knock him out and escape. On another occasion, she rescued her company’s flag, an incredibly important symbol for every regiment. After the flag had been torn down, she rescued it, climbed a tree, and hung it from the highest branch.
Her bravery was unquestionable, but she was fortunate never to be injured or suffer any wound that would have necessitated a medical examination.
As for toilet facilities, there were none. Woods, trees, and forests provided enough privacy for her. Quoting Illinois Historical Society records, historian Jean Freedman wrote in The New York Times that “Hodgers’s fellow soldiers recalled her as a modest young man who kept his shirt buttoned to the chin, hiding the place where an Adam’s apple should be. Her comrades teased her because she had no beard, but this was an army of boys as well as men, and she was not the only beardless recruit in her company. She resisted sharing a tent with anyone, but made close friends among her fellow soldiers; with one of them, she briefly owned a business after the war. Despite her diminutive size, she could ‘do as much work as anyone in the Company.’”
On August 17, 1865, Jennie was mustered out of the army, having served her full three years.
As the County Louth genealogical records of her life noted, she witnessed some of the worst fighting in the war. “Starting from Camp Fuller, Rockford, near Chicago City in the north, her regiment would have moved south into enemy territory, through various States along the Mississippi River, to New Orleans along the Gulf of Mexico. At one point, in the Battle of Guntown, the whole regiment was nearly annihilated. Further recruiting took place at Memphis. In all, the regiment marched 1,800 miles, and moved, by rail and water, another 8,160 miles.”
She returned to Illinois after the war, living as a man. She claimed her army pension and lived for forty years in the tiny town of Saunemin. Census records show several Irish families nearby. Her status as a man was never questioned. She lived alone and worked at various manual labor jobs. A local woman remembers Cashier rushing to her house during storms allegedly to calm down the kids, but the woman felt it was Cashier who needed comforting.
Every Memorial Day until 1910, she marched proudly with her fellow Civil War veterans in the military parade.
In 1910, her secret was first revealed after she was struck by an automobile and broke her leg. The doctor at the local hospital agreed to keep her secret safe, but advancing age and her leg injury meant she had to enter a veterans’ hospital. Her mental health began to suffer, though she did manage to keep her secret for two years in the old veterans’ home.
However, dementia and removal to a state hospital resulted in her secret becoming known. On March 29, 1914, The Washington Post reported on the woman who had posed as a man in the army. It went on to state the sad fact that Jennie was committed to an insane asylum, but reported how she’d “participated in some of the bloodiest battles of the war and behaved with gallantry.”
At the asylum, she was forced to wear female clothing and came under investigation from the Pension Bureau, who wanted to remove her pension. It was then that her old comrades came to her rescue and saved her meager income.
Albert Cashier/Jennie Hodgers passed away on October 11, 1915, at the age of seventy-two. She was buried in her old uniform of the 95th Illinois Infantry and with full military honors in Sunny Slope Cemetery in Saunemin.
Back in her hometown, plans are still in motion to honor her, including a statue and a local event every year to remember her. Abraham Lincoln’s most surprising soldier will not be forgotten. She answered the call from Lincoln and remains one of the most fascinating stories of the entire Civil War. In 1977, the people of Saunemin replaced the standard military marker on Jennie’s grave with a much bigger one bearing the following inscription:
Albert D. J. Cashier
Co. G, 95th Inf. Civil War
Born: Jennie Hodgers
In Clogherhead, Ireland
1843-1915
Bridget Divers—Braver Than Any Man
Bridget Divers, known as “Irish Biddy,” followed her husband into
battle and was famous for dragging wounded soldiers to safety while under fire.
At the Battle of Fair Oaks she is said to have urged her husband’s regiment, “Arragh go in boys and beat them and revenge me husband (who had been injured) and God be with ye.”
Divers also often participated in combat. According to Mary Livermore, Sanitary Commission member and later a famed women’s rights activist, “Sometimes when a soldier fell she took his place, fighting in his stead with unquailing courage. Sometimes she rallied retreating troops—sometimes she brought off the wounded from the field—always fearless and daring, always doing good service as a soldier.”
Sometimes she even tried to turn around retreating Union soldiers, while at other times, she brought the wounded back to safety.
Charlotte E. McKay, a Civil War nurse, recorded meeting Bridget at City Point, Virginia on March 28, 1865:
Bridget—or as the men call her, Biddy—has probably seen more of hardship and danger than any other woman during the war. She has been with the cavalry all the time, going out with them on their cavalry raids—always ready to succor the wounded on the field—often getting men off who, but for her, would be left to die, and, fearless of shell or bullet, among the last to leave. Protected by officers and respected by privates, with her little sun burnt face, she makes her home in the saddle or the shelter-tent; often, indeed sleeping in the open air without a tent, and by her courage and devotion ‘winning golden opinions from all sorts of people.’ She is an Irish woman, has been in the country sixteen years, and is now twenty-six years of age.
Civil War nurse Rebecca Usher also remembered the fiery Irish woman:
A few days ago I saw Bridget, who came out with the First Michigan Cavalry, and has been with the regiment ever since. She had just come in with the body of a captain who was killed in a cavalry skirmish. She had the body lashed to her horse, and carried him fifteen miles, where she procured a coffin, and sent him home. She says this is the hardest battle they have had, and the ground was covered with the wounded.
She had not slept for forty-eight hours, having worked incessantly with the wounded. She is brave, heroic, and a perfect enthusiast in her work. Bridget said to me, in her earnest way, ‘Why don’t you ladies go up there, and take care of those wounded men? Why, it’s the worst sight you ever saw. The ground is covered with them.’ ‘We should like to go,’ I said, ‘but they won’t let us.’ ‘Well, they can’t hinder me,’ she said, ‘Sheridan won’t let them.’
She survived the war and was reputed to have headed out west to the new frontier. She certainly left in a blaze of glory.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lincoln’s Irish Soldiers—Captured by the Rebels
Author’s Note: In the course of researching this book, I found to my utter surprise I had a relative, Dan Dowd, my great-great-grand uncle as far as I can tell, who fought and died fighting against slavery, for Lincoln and the Union. Thanks to brilliant research by Damian Shiels, his story has come to life. Dan Dowd lies in a marked grave at Andersonville National Cemetery near Atlanta, Georgia. His family had very hard times after his death, as the correspondence reveals.
Daniel and Mary Dowd were married in Dingle by Father Eugene O’Sullivan on October 29, 1853. The following year, on October 8, 1854, a child, Edward, was born.
Soon, the family emigrated to New York, arriving some time in the mid-1850s. In 1856, a daughter named Bridget, who would come to be known as “Biddy,” was born on Long Island.
The family had settled in Buffalo by the 1860s, and on September 6, 1862, Daniel enlisted in the Union army, becoming one of around two hundred thousand Irish-born men who would fight in the war. He enlisted in the 155th New York Infantry, led by Brigadier-General Michael Corcoran from Carrowkeel, County Sligo. Many Irish men in America chose to join Corcoran’s brigade because he was a known Fenian.
Daniel entered the army as a private in Company I of the 155th New York at Newport News, Virginia, on November 19, 1862. The records describe him as twenty-nine and a laborer, five foot five in height, with a fair complexion, gray eyes, and light hair.
His surname caused much confusion. He was placed on the regimental roster as “Daniel Dout,” whereas in other places his name was recorded as Doud or Doody. These mistakes would come back to haunt his family.
By January, his regiment was engaged in the Battle of the Deserted House in Virginia. Daniel then spent the following year with his unit in Virginia. On December 17, 1863, he was guarding a railroad bridge, part of a detachment of around fifty men protecting the Orange & Alexandria line at Sangster’s Station.
Sometime after 6:00 p.m., the detachment was attacked by a body of Confederate cavalry, who sought to burn down the bridge. The Rebels set fire to the regiment’s tents and forced them into retreat. As the vastly outnumbered Union soldiers were cut off, the detachment would normally have looked to their telegraph operator to call for help, but he was apparently too drunk to be able to use his equipment.
General Corcoran and the rest of the unit did not learn of the attack until about 8:30 p.m., after a local Unionist informed them of the events. Although Union reinforcements were eventually sent and saved the bridge, a number of the Union men had been captured, including Daniel Dowd.
There is a small monument with the soldiers’ names, including Daniel’s, at the location where they fought so bravely.
Although there is little record of Daniel’s life as a prisoner of war, he was most likely initially held near Richmond. In the spring or early summer of 1864, he was moved to the recently opened Camp Sumter in Georgia. Between February 1864 and the end of the war, nearly 13,000 prisoners died in the unsheltered compound, which was better known as Andersonville. Malnutrition, and therefore disease, was rife in the camp.
On July 3, 1864, Daniel, suffering from chronic diarrhea, was admitted to the hospital. He died before the end of the day. He now rests in Grave 2809 of the Andersonville National Cemetery. The warden, Henry Wirtz, was the only Confederate executed for war crimes.
Following his death, his widow Mary decided to leave the United States and return to Dingle with her children.
In 1869, while living on the Strand in Dingle, Mary, who was forty-five at the time, sought a US widow’s pension based on her husband’s service. She compiled information about her marriage and children and sent the application to Washington. However, Daniel’s surname had been written as “Doody” in their marriage record, significantly different from the “Dout” recorded on the regimental roster.
In addition, there was no documentation relating to Biddy’s birth. The Commissioner of Emigration wrote to every Catholic parish in Long Island for information, but nothing turned up. Unable to provide additional evidence, Mary’s claim was classified as “abandoned” and she was denied the pension.
However, she never fully gave up. In her file is a letter sent by her in the 1890s to the Secretary of the Claim Agent Office at the White House in Washington, D.C.
The letter, addressed from Waterside, Dingle, on July 4, 1892, reads:
Sir,
I beg to state that I, Mary Dowd, now living here and aged about 65, am the widow of Daniel Dowd, who served as a soldier in the late American war of 1863, and died a Prisoner of War in Richmond Prison Virginia [actually in Andersonville, Georgia]. Said Daniel Dowd served in the Army of the North. After his death, I deposited the necessary documents to prove my title to pension, in the hands of a Mr. Daniel McGillycuddy Solicitor Tralee, with the view to place them before the authorities in Washington, and he on 27th December 1873, forwarded the same to a Mr. Walsh, a Claim Agent, for the purpose of lodging same. Since, I have not received a reply to my solicitor’s letters or received any pay nor pension or acknowledgement of claim.
I also learn that my husband at his death had in his possession £100, which he left to Father McCooney who prepared him for death, in trust for me, and which sum never reached me.
I know no other course better, than apply to you, resti
ng assured that you will cause my just claim to be sifted out, when justice will be measured to a poor Irish widow who is now working hard to maintain a long family.
Because Mary was illiterate, the letter was written for her by her solicitor, Daniel McGillycuddy. She signed it with an ‘X.’ It is unlikely she ever received any compensation from the US government.
The American-born Biddy grew up in Dingle, County Kerry, instead of the United States. She married a fisherman, Patrick Johnson, and they had seven children. She died in 1945 and is buried in St. James’s Church in Dingle.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Man They Couldn’t Kill—The Irish Medal of Honor Winners
Not only did the Irish come to fight for Lincoln, they came to fight well. “The Fighting Irish,” in this context, is real.
The proof is there. The Medal of Honor, America’s highest military honor, was created in December 1861 during the Civil War. It is the only US Military Award presented by the president in the name of Congress. The Irish own far more than any other foreign country. Historian Damian Shiels has identified 146 Irish-born Medal of Honor winners. There are likely more, he says.
The most remarkable honoree was “The Man They Couldn’t Kill,” Michael Dougherty, a private in the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry from Falcarragh, County Donegal.
He won the medal for showing extraordinary bravery during an engagement with a Confederate regiment at Jefferson, Virginia, which saved an estimated 2,500 lives by preventing the Confederates from flanking the Union forces.
Dougherty had nine lives. He and 126 members of the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry were later captured and spent twenty-three months in different Southern prisons, including the Andersonville death-camp in Georgia. He was the only survivor from his regiment.
His trials did not end there. Dougherty was heading for home on the steamship Sultana on the Mississippi River when the boilers exploded. Of the two thousand passengers, only 900 survived. Dougherty was one of them.
