Page 51 - WDT MAGAZINE IRELAND ISSUE WINTER 2018

instead ordered them to spend the rest of their lives in battle of Antietam, his horse was shot out from under
a Tasmanian penal colony. him as he led his soldiers in a dramatic charge against
Three years later Meagher escaped the penal colony Confederates. He was later wounded at the battle of
in an open rowboat and after four days at sea was Fredricksburg but survived the war, although the Irish
picked up by an American whaling ship on its way to Brigade lost many men.
San Francisco. Later in New York, he became a suc- After the war, Meagher became the first governor of
cessful lawyer and publisher of newspapers targeting the Montana territory. In 1867 at age 44 his luck finally
a large number of Irish immigrants in America. He ran out when he fell off a riverboat and drowned in the
also spent a year in Central America looking into build- Missouri River. His body was never found.
ing a rail line across Panama or Nicaragua. Visitors to the Waterford Museum of Treasures can
During the American Civil War, Meagher was a com- see a silk sash from his American Civil War uniform,
missioned officer in the Union army. He recruited Irish his sword and two of his Civil War Medals awarded for
immigrants into the “fighting 69th” Irish Brigade and heroism.
eventually became a general. In 1862 at the bloody

Left to Right: Thomas Meagher poses with
his Union troops. A statue in front of the Mon-
tana State Capital and plaque on the building
where he flew the first tricolor Irish flag.

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