…Came to the Defence of Henry Wirz.
"Waterford's Edward Wellington Boate belongs to the large cohort of Irish journalists who ended up fighting, or in someway participating, in the American Civil War. His story is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating. A member of the Tammany regiment, the 42nd New York, his capture and incarceration as a POW set him on a path that would eventually see him not only rail against the Lincoln administration, but also come to the support of the loathed Andersonville Commander Henry Wirz. It was an association from which his reputation would never recover. Friend of the site James Doherty has researched Boate's story and shares his work with us in the guest post below.
Edward Wellington Boate was born in Waterford in 1822. He came from a relatively well to do family, with his father working as a Land Waiter (a type of customs official) who would later rise to the position of Port Surveyor. In his early life Boate would pursue a career as a journalist working for the Waterford Chronicle and Wexford Guardian. He married Henrietta Bruce O'Neill in Wexford in 1849 and later moved to London, where he acted as the foreign correspondent for the Wexford Guardian. His career continued to prosper in England, where he worked for the Times as a Parliamentary correspondent and also spent time in the Passport Office. (1)
Sometime around 1861 Boate and his family (by now he had two children) moved to the United States, where he again pursued a career as a journalist. His reasons for joining the army are unknown, but perhaps he felt that he wanted to part of the news rather than just reporting on it.
In the summer of 1863 he joined the 42nd New York Volunteers, a strongly democratic regiment organised by the Tammany Society. Interestingly the Waterford man had joined the Union army using an alias; he enlisted under the name of Edward W Bates. Soldiers fought under aliases for many reasons, some due to previous desertion from other units or armies, some in order to escape past events. In the case of Boate we can only guess. Perhaps due to his background and unusual surname, he wanted to choose a more common name to fit in with the rest of his unit?
Full article here
link
Amicalement
Armand