Series 7 - William McCarter memoir

474pp

Kerby A. Miller created his transcripts of the memoir from the original transcripts held in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/3269).

Paperback copy of My Life in the Irish Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter, 116th Pennsylvania Infantry, edited by Kevin E. O'Brien (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996) from McCarter's manuscript written 1875-1879, plus Kerby A. Miller's transcripts of selected portions of the memoir and Miller's introductory notes on McCarter and the memoir.
Per Kerby A. Miller: 'William McCarter, b. 1840-41 in Derry city, into a Protestant family that, judging from his literary abilities, was probably at least petty bourgeois. Emig. year unknown... ...He was married with several children when he enlisted in the Union Army in 1862. Written: 1875-79, at his family's behest. Published 1996. This is an excellent memoir in several respects: First, it's the only description, written by an Irish immigrant and ordinary soldier, of the famous Irish Brigade's disastrous assault on Mayre's Heights, at the Battle of Fredericksburg 13 Dec. 1862, which subsequently became a centerpiece of Irish-American Catholic mythology and identity-and their alleged "title-deed" to full US citizenship, despite nativist-Protestant prejudice. Ironically, McCarter was a Protestant, and his Pennsylvania unit, although part of the Irish Brigade, seems to have been virtually all-Protestant and native-born American. Second, McCarter became secretary to the Brigade's commander, Thomas Francis Meagher, of Young Ireland "exile" fame. Although McCarter never mentions Irish or Irish-American nationalism, or the circumstances of Meagher's residence in America, he provides a detailed and sympathetic description of Meagher-despite acknowledging the latter's terrible alcoholism. McCarter even copied Meagher's Irish poems, which the General sent home to Ireland. Third, McCarter's memoir is beautifully written: it's dramatic, harrowing, with a minimum of religious and political or romantic reflections.'