The Confederate Irish

Bernd Biege mentions that the current exhibit on Irish soldiers at the National Museum in Dublin's Collins Barracks (across the river from the Guinness Brewery) includes a piece on Irish soldiers who fought on the Confederate side in the US Civil War. As he says, they are not as well known as the Irish people who fought on the Union side. And it's appropriate since it's Confederate History Month (not in Massachusetts though, needless to say),

He mentions the Mexican-American War, in which Irish people also fought on both sides. More recently, Irish people fought on both sides in the Spanish Civil War, and it was pointed out that they could have saved on the travel costs by just staying in Ireland and staging a battle somewhere flat like the Curragh in County Kildare.