Ashokan Farewell/ Sullivan Ballou Letter!
Brought to my attention by Sean Reilly, I watched the RTE Nationwide episode on the American Civil War, a subject we did a feature on in our 2021 magazine and it has rightly been called Ireland's forgotten war and difficult to understand why. You could argue that Ireland today is the commemoration of two cultures with the mainstream media and establishment classes leaning much more towards one side than the other and I'll let you figure that one out for yourselves. But this one was common to both sides and is almost completely forgotten. I know that President Kennedy on his visit here in 1963 gifted the standard of the '69th to the Irish people and what two people in the street today could tell you about that. Given the numbers involved that fought on both the Union and Confederate sides, why has there never been a commemoration day or other event to mark the sacrifices made? The battlefields and graveyards of the American Civil War have name after name of the Irish who died and yet here there is almost nothing here. Strange ...
Loaded by David McCullough and with thanks.
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