Immigrant Soldiers

St. Patrick's Day is a good occasion to consider the career of Thomas Sweeny, an Irish immigrant who joined the US Army and was wounded more than once in the Mexican War, losing his right arm. Staying in the Army, he became a general in the Civil War, under Grant's command at the Battle of Fort Donelson. Then at Shiloh, defending against the surprise attack which produced the first mass-casualty battle of the war, Sweeny was wounded again three times while his brigade stood its ground.
He served in the war until 1864, when his career was temporarily derailed because of his brawling with a superior officer.
One of the (many) extraordinary things about the Civil War is the number of immigrants who rose to high military rank. While most like Sweeny were in the Union army, probably the greatest immigrant general was another Irishman from County Cork, Patrick Cleburne, who fought for the Confederacy (despite being willing to free slaves toward the end of the war).
Sweeny appears as a character in several chapters of The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant, along with the Polish immigrant colonel Włodzimierz Bonawentura Krzyżanowski, who led a successful night attack at Gettysburg against the Louisiana Tigers.
The subject of Cleburne briefly crops up in in the novel, and other immigrant soldiers mentioned include the Irishman Thomas Meagher, the Germans Gustave Kammerling and Peter Osterhaus, and the Hungarian Alexander Asboth.
And, as previously mentioned, the Russian immigrant Union general John Turchin and his wife Nadine, like Sweeny and Kryzanowski, appear as characters in the book.