Friday, March 1, 2013
Historian's Report March 2013
Irish Historian’s Report
Division One is honored to share Irish History articles provided
by The National Historian of The Ancient Order of Hibernians
 |
| A.O.H. National Historian Michael McCormack |
MYLES
KEOGH
by Mike McCormack, AOH Historian
Myles was born, one of 13 Keogh
children, to a nationalist family in Co Carlow.
His uncle Pat had been executed by the English following the rising of
1798. He could have lived the life of a
farmer for he inherited the family estate in Kilkenny, but there was something
in him that craved adventure. In March 1860,
Pope Pius IX called upon young Catholic men to defend the Papal States, which
were threatened by the revolutionary forces of Garibaldi seeking a united
Italy. Keogh was one of 1,400 Irishmen
who volunteered and was appointed a battalion lieutenant.
In September, the Papal Army was
defeated. Following a brief
incarceration in Genoa, Keogh and 45 Irish comrades traveled to Rome, where a
special papal medal Pro Petri Sede
was instituted and presented by Pius IX.
It literally means ‘for the seat
of Peter’ and depicts an inverted cross like the one on which St Peter was
crucified. They then joined the Papal
Guard as the green-uniformed "Company of Saint Patrick." For his service there, Keogh was also awarded
the Order of St Gregory medal, but the real fighting was over and he was
getting restless.
 |
| Colonel Myles Keogh |
The American Civil War was raging and
President Lincoln authorized New York’s fiery Bishop ‘Dagger’ John Hughes to
travel to Italy to recruit veterans of the Papal War. He met with Keogh and his comrades and in
March, 1862, Keogh resigned his commission in the Company of Saint Patrick, and
with another officer, Daniel J. Keily of Waterford, returned briefly to
Ireland, then set sail to New York, where they met with another Papal comrade,
Joseph O'Keefe. Through Secretary of
State, William Seward's intervention the three medal holders were given Captains'
rank and on April 15 assigned to the staff of Irish-born Brigadier General
James Shields, whose forces were about to confront the Confederate army of
Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.
Keogh won praise for his bravery in
the Valley Campaign and at Port Republic where Dan Keily was severely wounded.
On July 31 Keogh and O'Keefe were transferred to the staff of cavalry Brigadier
General John Buford who commended them as "dashing, gallant and daring
soldiers." Army commander George McClellan described Keogh as "a most
gentlemanlike man of soldierly appearance," whose "record had been
remarkable." Keogh served with
Buford through the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville campaigns, and was in
the thick of the huge cavalry clash at Brandy Station, where O'Keefe was shot
in the leg and captured. He would later
be killed in action. Keogh, for his part
in the battle of Gettysburg received the brevet rank of Major and was later
transferred to the staff of General George Stoneman, commanding the mounted
forces of Sherman's army in the western theater of the war.
Captain Theodore Allen of the 7th
Ohio Cavalry later recalled that Myles Keogh's dandy appearance made him
unpopular with the hard-bitten western troopers who didn’t like his flawless
appearance. Allen wrote; "there was altogether too much style. He was as
handsome a young man as I ever saw. His uniform was spotless and fitted him
like the skin on a sausage." And he
always carried that foreign medal. But
Allen revised his opinion when Keogh displayed undaunted courage on the battlefield. General Stoneman saw to it that Keogh was
promoted to Major and acting chief of staff.
He accompanied the General on a daring raid behind enemy lines to free
the Union prisoners incarcerated at Macon, Georgia. If all went well, Stoneman planned to
continue on and liberate the notorious stockade at Andersonville. But on July
31, 1864, they had their horses shot from under them and were taken prisoner.
Confined in Macon and later at Charleston, Keogh was lucky enough to be freed
in a prisoner exchange with General Stoneman on September 30. He wrote to his sister, Ellen, "I thank God I was thought enough of by Genl.
Sherman to be exchanged. I would have
died in a very short time and as it is I am almost broken down."
After recovering his health, in the
war's final months Keogh rendered distinguished service and at age 25, emerged
from the war with the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel and hoped to obtain a
commission in the postwar Army. In the
meantime he spent several months on duty in Tennessee where he befriended
Colonel Andrew J. Alexander and his young bride, Evy Martin Alexander and
General Emory Upton. When General Upton
wed Evy Alexander's sister, Emily Martin, he asked Keogh to serve as Best Man. Through his association with Upton and Alexander,
in October, 1855, Keogh first visited Willowbrook – the Martin family home on
Owasco Lake, in Auburn, NY. Over the
next decade Myles Keogh became almost a family member and there was a rumored
romance between Keogh and Cornelia Martin, one of Evy's and Emily's sisters.
In
November of 1866 he was ordered to Fort Riley, Kansas, to become Captain of
Company I in the newly formed 7th Cavalry Regiment, in which the flamboyant
George Armstrong Custer was now serving as Lieutenant Colonel. The second of the three original Papal medal
holders who enlisted together, Dan Keily, died of yellow fever in
Louisiana. Lieutenant Henry Nowlan,
became Keogh's closest friend in the regiment.
On October 14, 1875, Keogh went to Fort Lincoln, and from that day until
his death was present for duty with Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
Meanwhile, Sitting Bull, Chief of the
Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, was attracting an assembly of tribes from the Cheyenne,
Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, and Oglala led by Crazy Horse, Gall, Two Moons, and a
host of Chieftains to a spiritual rally involving the Ghost Dance – a new
religion based on a merge of Indian and Christian traditions. The 5-day dance was for universal love and
peace with the white man, but the assembly of 1,000 Indians frightened the
Indian Agent who called for more troops to break up the gathering. The army dispatched Col Gibbons from the
west, Gen Crook from the south, Gen Terry from the east to catch the Indians in
a pincer movement. Custer, as part of
Terry’s command, left Fort Lincoln to join Terry at the Little Big Horn
valley. Custer was first to arrive.
Myles Keogh seems to have sensed that
the 1876 campaign would be his last. He gave copies of his will to several
comrades, including Lieutenant Nowlan, and took out a $10,000 life insurance
policy. He also left a satchel of personal papers with Mrs. Eliza Porter, the
wife of Lieutenant James Porter, and instructed her to burn them should he be
killed. Finally Keogh wrote what would be his last letter to Nelly Martin,
concluding: "We leave Monday on an
Indian expedition & if I ever return I will go on and see you all. I have requested to be packed up and shipped
to Auburn in case I am killed and I desire to be buried there. God bless you all, remember if I should die
-- you may believe that I loved you and every member of your family -- it was a
second home to me."
Perhaps
the strongest testimony to Keogh's bravery and leadership ability came at
Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. The senior captain among the five companies
wiped out with Custer that day, Keogh died surrounded by the men of Company I.
When the sun-blackened and dismembered dead were buried three days later,
Keogh's body was found at the center of a group of troopers. He was the only one beside Custer who was not
mutilated, perhaps because of the "medicine" the Indians saw in the
Papal Medal he wore on a chain about his neck.
His left knee had been shattered by a bullet that also wounded his
horse, "Comanche," indicating that they may have fallen together. The
badly injured animal was found on the battlefield and nursed back to health as
the last survivor of the tragedy. As
regimental mascot it was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas where it was used in
parades and exhibited a fondness for beer.
It died at 29 years of age in 1891and was sent to the University of
Kansas to be stuffed. When the Army
refused to pay the taxidermy bill it was donated to the University of Kansas
museum where it stands to this day.
As for Siting Bull, after a brief
career with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, he returned to the Standing Rock
Reservation in South Dakota, where he was welcomed by a large group of his
former followers. Agency police, afraid he would resurrect interest in the
Ghost Dance, tried to arrest him and in a scuffle with agency police he was
shot and killed by Indian members of the Agency Police force. Around his neck was found a Pro Petri Sede medal
 |
| Keogh Gravesite, Auburn, New York |
As for Myles Keogh, no one felt his
death more keenly than his surrogate family, the Martins of
"Willowbrook." In 1877, they had Keogh's remains re-interred in the
family plot at Auburn, where he had wished to be. This gallant Irish soldier of fortune,
veteran of three wars on two continents was buried on the afternoon of October
25, 1877. Today the town of Auburn
sponsors an annual Myles Keogh Day which starts with a parade in his honor, an
afternoon of athletic competitions, an award ceremony and concludes with a
dinner; among the sponsors is the Auburn AOH.
On a visit to Auburn many years ago I was taken to see the grave of
Myles Keough. It has a cross over the
grave and at the head, a huge white marble stone on which is carved a military
cape and sword; and carved on the base is an epitaph from the pen of poet
Bayard Taylor which reads:
Sleep
soldier! Still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing
The bravest are the tenderest
The loving are the daring.
Your truth and valor wearing
The bravest are the tenderest
The loving are the daring.
