St. Patrick’s Battalion remembered
History has a strange sense of justice for those documenting and preserving it for posterity. Even historians are not immune to the quirks and turns of the Greek sense of moira, the fates who weave a grand sense of cosmic irony over mortals.
In the plaza of San Ángel, Mexico, a plaque reads, “In Memory of the Heroic Battalion of St. Patrick Martyrs Who Gave Their Lives in the Mexican Cause during the Unjust North American Invasion of 1847.”
The St. Patrick’s Battalion (1846-1848), part of the Mexican army made up of men of European descent, was led by John Reilly, a union soldier who deserted because he felt compelled to follow a higher order than a decree that violated human rights and basic human decency.
Back then, America was swept by a raging fever — Manifest Destiny, a manufactured belief that the early republic needed to occupy all lands stretching west across the Mississippi. California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and parts of Colorado were easy targets of western expansionism. Once Texas was admitted into the Union as a slave state, the land-grab expanded, and President James Polk got his war with Mexico.
Manifest Destiny was a convenient crisis to justify something unjustifiable. Not all were taken by the rhetoric. A young, junior officer named Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs, “I do not think there ever was a more wicked war than that waged by the United States in Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” Even John Quincy Adams opposed the war and referred to the U.S. conflict with Mexico as “a most unrighteous war.”
But those who did have the moral courage paid a heavy price. Capt. John Riley of Galway, Ireland, became disillusioned with his newly adopted country after a series of misfortunes at the hands of military officers who regularly flogged Irish and German Catholic soldiers over the tiniest infractions and reneged on military payments. Anti-Catholicism was rampant, and immigrants from Ireland and Germany were lured into signing up for military service right off the boats. They needed work to send money back home. As the war festered, untrained units from Texas — mainly Texas volunteers — saw opportunities to settle old scores with Mexico.
According to the website “The Ancient Order of Hibernians,” under the subject “The San Patricios”: “Serving in the disputed Mexican territory, the Irish couldn’t believe the actions of the US military. In trying to initiate hostility, churches were desecrated, religious processions disrupted and drunken soldiers, who raped, pillaged and burned Mexican villages and churches, were only sent home.”
Riley led the unit composed of hundreds of immigrants and expatriates of European descent who fought with brave hearts in five major battles from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, to Churubusco in Mexico City. But a mightier force prevailed, and U.S. Gen. Winfield Scott won the war.
After the war, some 30 from Riley’s battalion were hanged near the steps of El Castillo de Chapultepec, while another 48 were sentenced to hanging. Riley, however, was spared, and tied to a post and flogged until he passed out. After a branding of “D” for deserter on his cheeks, Riley and his comrades were freed. They returned to Mexico to serve out time in the Mexican army, and Riley retired as a major.
History about deserters is usually absent from textbooks because it disrupts the patriotic narrative. Riley is not forgotten in his native Ireland nor the country that adopted him.
Historians note a sad irony: Years after the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson gave a full pardon and amnesty to Confederate soldiers for the offense of treason against the United States.