Modern-Day New York Guardsmen Honor Civil War ‘Irish Brigade’

On Dec. 13, 1862, a brigade of Union infantrymen, many of them Irish Catholic immigrants who had settled in Brooklyn and Queens, attacked a fortified Confederate position along the high ground south of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The so-called “Irish Brigade” comprised five regiments, three from New York City: the 63rd, 69th, and 88th.