Brigadier General Michael Corcoran
Dauntless and Gallant
Sligo-born leader of the Fighting 69th Regiment

A Young Michael Corcoran

Michael Corcoran was born on September 21, 1827, at Carrowkeel, Ballymote, County Sligo. He received a fair education which he augmented by reading widely and wisely. He joined the Royal Irish Constabulary when only nineteen, and remained with them for three years, stationed at Creeslough, County Donegal. In Donegal, he was an on-scene witness to the horrors of the great famine. He was drawn by the Young Ireland Movement and resigned from the constabulary in August, 1848, returning to Carrowkeel.

Toward the end of the year, he sailed from the port of Sligo on a windjammer, bound for the distant shores of America. the trip which usually took two weeks, cost two pounds, with Michael providing his own food. He landed in New York City, facing and, in time, overcoming the many hardships and vicissitudes encountered by Irish emigrants before him.

Corcoran worked a variety of jobs. For a time, he sold oysters on the Bowery, was a "policeman" for the Revenue Service and a clerk in the Post Office. Then he went to work for John Heeney, proprietor of "Hibernian Hall," one of the most popular meeting and gathering places for the Irish in the city. The Hall was also a meeting place for the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Michael Corcoran, it could be said, went "public" when he joined the military - enlisting in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment as a private in 1851 and quickly rising through the ranks...orderly sergeant, first lieutenant, captain. He achieved prominence in New York in 1860 when he refused to parade his troops before the visiting Prince of Wales. For his refusal to obey orders he faced a court martial.

The court action however was averted and charges dropped due to the declaration of the Civil War. Perhaps his greatest engagement was the unfortunate Battle of Bull Run, which proved so disastrous for the Northern Armies in the American Civil War. As a result of the battle, Corcoran, known as 'the hero of Bull Run', spent thirteen months in prison in the South. Subsequently, he got full commission as a Brigadier General and his Irish Legion became better known as 'Corcoran's Legion'.

Tragedy struck this Ballymote mand at the early age of 36 years in 1863. It was widely believed that he was fatally injured due to a fall from a horse. But evidence contradicts this assumption. In an article for the American Irish Historical Society Journal of 1913-1914, Dr. John G. Coyle, General Corcoran's biographer wrote:
"Although it is commonly believed that General Corcoran died as a result of a fall from General Meagher's horse, Dr. John Dwyer (the Irish Brigade's Cork-born Surgeon) is the authority for the statement that the fall to the ground did not occur until Corcoran had stopped the horse and dismounted and that the true cause of death, as certified by Army Medical Director Reyburn, was "cerebral apoplexy". That is, "a stoppage in the flow of blood to the brain." Or what we laymen call "a stroke".

Captain D. P. Conyngham of the Irish Brigade, in his history of the Brigade, wrote on the passing of Corcoran: