Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish Patriot, American Civil War General, and Montana’s Territorial Governor was born in Waterford, Ireland in 1823. He became a leading figure in the Irish Independence movement of the early 19th Century. In the aftermath of the Irish Uprising of 1848, he was tried and convicted of treason along with eight other Irish patriots. All were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered by the English courts. Worldwide protests forced Queen Victoria to commute the death sentences and the all were banished to Van Dieman’s Island (Tasmania), an island off the coast of Australia. Within four years, Meagher escaped and made his way to New York where he would rise to prominence as a journalist and a lawyer. The Irish in New York welcomed him with open arms and he soon earned a nationwide reputation as lecturer addressing huge audiences wherever he went.
When the Civil War erupted 1861, Meagher formed a company composed of 145 men of Irish descent and he was commissioned its Captain and led them to join the 69th Regiment of New York. This popular military unit attracted thousands of Irish immigrants as well as Irish-Americans. Meagher appealed to the Irish to fight as a unit for the Union they believed in. To this end, he proposed the formation of an Irish Brigade. President Lincoln, himself, appointed Meagher a Brigadier General of this Brigade a unit of the Army of the Potomac. The Irish Brigade brought great glory to themselves at Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, White Oak Swamp, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. This hard-charging unit, with Meagher always at its lead, was involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War.
General Meagher’s fame and military record prompted President Johnson to appoint him Secretary of the Montana Territory he became the Acting Territorial Governor in 1865 until July, 1867. The new land was rift with strife and power ploys and it was difficult to know whether the vigilante’s were the protectors or the peril of the innocents. In spite of all the turmoil of the times, he was given greatly deserved credit for leadership in the progress that Montana made toward statehood. He called for the second legislative session in the state’s history and shortly after, summoned a constitutional convention to meet in Helena. His leadership came to an abrupt end when on July 1st, 1867, he mysteriously disappeared off his boat in Fort Benton. His body was never recovered from the waters of the Missouri River. While the victim of orchestrated slander, recent historians have disproved the slurs and lent credit to the theory that the General was murdered that night because his vision of justice was in the way.
There is one other item about this great man that is little known. The current National banner of the Republic of Ireland is known as the “Irish Tri-Color.” Back in Meagher’s Irish Patriot Days, while addressing the Confederation, as the movement was known, he unfurled a splendid flag made of rich silk, with the colors of green, white and orange. He explained to the assembled…”The white in the center signifies a lasting truth between the orange and the green, and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of Irish Protestant and Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood.”
The State of Montana honors this man who was a soldier, a statesman, orator, journalist, lawyer, patriot, and American Civil War hero, with a monument in front of her State’s Capital.