Gallant Sixty-Ninth, The

DESCRIPTION: "We are privates in the Sixty-Ninth, We follow the fife and drum; We can't forget our comrades, And their glory at Bull Run... Our boys helped gain the day." "We march behind the band, true sons of Paddy's land." They remember Ireland, fight for the Union
AUTHOR: Words: Edward Harrigan / Music: David Braham
EARLIEST DATE: 1875 ("Down Broadway, or, From Central Park to the Battery")
KEYWORDS: soldier war patriotic Ireland
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 21, 1861 - First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas. Confederates under Beauregard and Johnston rout an inexperienced Federal force under McDowell.
Aug 29-30, 1862 - Second Battle of Bull Run/Manassas. Lee's army takes Pope's force in flank and rolls it up.
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, vol. I, #5, pp. 20-22, "The Gallant '69th'" (1 text, 1 tune)
Spaeth-WeepSomeMoreMyLady, pp. 175-176, "The Gallant 69th" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Richard Moody, Ned Harrigan: From Corlear's Hook to Herald Square , Nelson Hall, 1980, photo inset following p. 54 has a copy of the sheet music (interestingly, the outer cover calls it "The Gallant Sixty-Ninth," the interior "The Gallant '69th.')
Roud #V41521
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Battle of Bull Run" [Laws A9] (subject: the battle of Bull Run) and notes and referenes there
NOTES [854 words]: For background on Harrigan and Braham, see the notes to "The Babies on Our Block."
The humor of this song may be lost on modern audiences, because the song claims that "our boys helped gain the day" at Bull Run. But the Union did not gain the day at either First Bull Run or Second Bull Run; the Union forces were swept from the field in both cases. (For background, see the notes to "The Battle of Bull Run" [Laws A9]).
There were actually two "Irish Sixty-Ninth" regiments, the Pennsylvania 69th and the New York 69th. "The Irish Sixty-Ninth" is about the former; this is about the latter. In a sense, even the New York 69th was two regiments; there was the militia regiment, which fought at Bull Run under Colonel Michael Corcoran (who was wounded and captured; the 69th militia suffered 28 kiilled, 59 wounded, and 95 missing; McDonald, p. 192). The survivors were then mostly re-enrolled in the "true" 69 NY (a three-year regiment rather than 90 day militia) and the other units of the Irish Brigade (Bilby, p. 50), a unit which suffered very heavily in the war; see the notes to "By the Hush."
We can be confident that the song's reference is to the militia Irish 69th because the unit fought at First Bull Run -- the three-year unit was not involved in Second Bull Run (Bilby, p. 50; Boatner, p. 594).
For all the humor of the claim to have won the day, the Irish Brigade was certainly "Gallant," as the horrendous casualties testified (again, see the notes to "By the Hush"). "The gallantry of the real 'fighting 69th' at Gettysburg, at the Second Battle of Bull Run, at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville was well know" (Moody, p. 61 -- although, as we saw, the reference should be to First Bull Run or not at all). "It was, many said, the best brigade in the Army of the Potomac. Some said it was the best befiage in the whole Union army and perhaps the best brigade on either side in the American Civil War" (Bilby, p. ix). Few objective observers would go so far as to call it the best brigade of the war (if they named a Top Brigade, it would be either the Iron Brigade of the West or Hood's Texas Brigade, depending perhaps on whether they were northern or southern, e.g. Gottfried, p. 39 calls the Iron Brigade "Arguably the finest fighting unit in the Army of the Potomac" and on p. 436 says that the Texans were "the best in Lee' army") -- but there is no question but that the Irishmen were famous, and they earned their fame with blood: "The II Corps' First Division lost more men killed in action than any other Federal division, and the Irish Brigade lost more men than any other brigade in that division" (Bilby, p. ix).
Franceschina, pp. 86-87, says that this is not from a full Harrigan and Braham drama but from an 1875 sketch, "Down Broadway, or, From Central Park to the Battery." "Featuring an exact replication of the 69th Regiment uniforms [which can be seen in the sheet music cover reproduced by Franceschina], the routine starred Kitty O'Neil as the colonel of the regiment and Edward Harrigan as a rube who is dumfounded by the sight of the statue of George Washington in Union Square. The marching song designed for the boys impersonating the 69th Regiment was titled 'The Gallant "69th"' and composed in imitation of 'The Mulligan Guard, complete with introductory military cadence, and the extended parade music after the chorus."
Moody, p. 52, shows just how much of a rube Harrigan played: his character is "overwhelmed by Washington's statue in Union Square: 'That's the man -- when he was a boy said to his father, "Take back the meat ax I can't tell a lie I broke the window with a brick."'"
Kahn, pp. 184-185, describes the original sketch and the tour in which it was presented: "[Tour manage Martin] Hanley was shepherd of a company of thirty-seven, which included a chorus of fifteen teen-age boys known as 'Harrigan and Hart's Original Miniature Sixty-ninth Regiment.' This was made up of fourteen white boys and a colored target carrier. They did one number, 'The Gallant Sixty-ninth,' in which Hart played the regimental commander and Harrigan a doddering old man who kept trying to enlist in its youthful ranks. The diminutive soldiers had been well drilled for the stage.... Offstage, however, they constituted something of a disciplinary problem as they moved from town to town. 'The regiment got me down and rolled and washed me with snow,' Harrigan wrote to New York from one wintry stop. Two of them were so unmanageable that they had to be shipped home soon after the jaunt got under way. The survivors proved to be of great promotional value. They would participate nimbly in any parade that any community they passed through was putting on, and every Sunday Hanley would march them en masse, and in uniform, to church, where they caused quite a stir."
The sheet music of this song was dedicated to "Col. Cavanah and the Officers and Men of the 69th Regt. N.G.S.N.T." (Spaeth, p. 183; Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, reads this as "N.C.S.N.T.," which is nonsense) -- which means the post-war militia/National Guard regiment, not the Civil War unit. - RBW
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File: HaBrG69

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