Patrick Cleburne
Unlike Generals Smyth and Sweeny, Irishman Patrick Cleburne became a commander for the Confederate forces during the Civil War. Cleburne was born in 1828 in Ovens, County Cork. He served in the British Army, rising to the rank of Corporal. Cleburne crossed the Atlantic and settled in Helena, Arkansas in 1849. There, he found work as a pharmacist, and he also started a newspaper. Cleburne believed in the Confederate cause, and he joined up with a local militia.
In March 1862, nearly a year into the Civil War, Cleburne was named a Brigadier General. Throughout the course of the conflict, Cleburne would rise to the rank of Major General, and he remains the highest-ranking Irish-born officer in American military history. During the war, Cleburne commanded his men in several battles, including Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Pickett’s Mill. He was shot in the face and wounded at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky in August 1862.
Cleburne returned to the battlefield and earned the nickname “Stonewall of the West” due to his bravery, strength, and his use of key strategic points such as hills and ridges in battles in Tennessee and Georgia. General Robert E. Lee called Cleburne “a meteor shining from a clouded sky.”
In 1864, the Confederate forces were clearly in trouble, and General Cleburne proposed freeing and arming slaves to help the South’s war effort. His proposal fell on deaf ears, however, and the fight raged on. On November 30, 1864, at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, south of Nashville, Cleburne was shot and killed as he led a charge against a Union position. Patrick Cleburne’s legacy is very evident throughout the South. Counties are named after him in Alabama and Arkansas, as well as the town Cleburne, Texas.
