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The Irish Are Coming
The stories, struggles, and influence of the Irish in America
BUILDING AMERICA · FORGOTTEN VOICES FROM AMERICA'S BLOODIEST WAR · 1861 - 1865·
Civil War Letters from the Irish Brigade
Why would an Irish immigrant take a stranger's place in the Union Army for money — and what happened to the mother he sent his bounty to before he ever reached the front?
A teenager writes home from a Civil War battlefield, tired of the killing — not knowing it's the last letter he'll ever send. Historian Damian Shiels reads the letters Irish soldiers sent home, and the lives behind them.
ABOUT THE GUEST
He grew up in Ireland — and spent fifteen years recovering the voices of the Irish who left it for America.
Damian Shiels, Ph.D., grew up in Ireland, trained as an archaeologist at University College Cork, and built a career in museums, heritage, and conflict archaeology before turning to history. He earned his Ph.D. from Northumbria University, where his research recovered the voices of Irish American soldiers through their own correspondence. He founded Irish in the American Civil War in 2010, co-hosts the Transatlantic podcast, and has spent fifteen years tracing the Irish men who fought, wrote home, and died in America's bloodiest war.
EPISODE RESOURCES
PUBLISHED WORKS
"I'm tired of the fighting and the killing of men, but I suppose we have to continue because that's what we need to do." — Barney Carr, Irish soldier, in his last letter home from Kennesaw Mountain, June 1864
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