Dunphy: An immigrant who won the Medal of Honor
Between 1820 and 1860, over one-third of all our nation’s immigrants came from Ireland. They weren’t exactly met with open arms. It wasn’t uncommon to see signs in stores and other businesses that read: “Dogs and Irish Keep Out.”
Nonetheless, immigrant Irishmen demonstrated their love for and loyalty to their new country by serving in the Union military during the Civil War. Yes, some sons of Eire living in New York City rioted in 1863 to protest the Lincoln administration’s draft, a tragedy brilliantly depicted in Martin Scorsese’s film “Gangs of New York.”
But thousands of others rallied to the Union banner. Consider the courage of the Irish Brigade, which was comprised of five regiments of Irish Americans from New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The Irish Brigade lost 45 percent of its men and fourteen of its fifteen field officers during a suicidal charge against the Confederates at Fredericksburg.
Born in Ireland in 1841 (some sources state 1842) just before the Great Famine, Richard Dunphy was living in New York City when he decided that he’d rather serve in the navy than the army. He enlisted on December 17, 1863 and was assigned the rank of coal heaver. It was a dirty, grueling job but vitally important in the era of steam-powered vessels with boilers heated by coal.
The Union victory on August 5, 1864 in the Battle of Mobile Bay drove yet another nail in the South’s coffin. Mobile Bay was the Confederacy’s last major port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River. Its harbor was heavily protected with mines, which were then known as “torpedoes.” Union Admiral David Farragut ordered his fleet to enter the bay. One of the ships struck a torpedo and sank. When the other ships began to retreat, Farragut issued an order that is usually paraphrased as, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Despite heavy fire, the Union triumphed.
Dunphy was a coal heaver that day on the USS Hartford, which was Farragut’s flagship. During the battle, he incurred horrendous injuries from a shell fired by the Confederate ironclad CSS Tennessee. Dunphy lost both his arms well above the elbows.
Irish immigrant Richard Dunphy was approved for the Medal of Honor on New Year’s Eve 1864. The citation noted that “With his ship under terrific enemy shellfire, Dunphy performed his duties with skill and courage.”
In 1866, however, someone wrote a letter dictated by Dunphy to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles complaining that he had never received his medal. Dunphy also expressed hope that veterans’ pensions could be increased.
“The pension is low especially in my case where I have to pay a man to accompany me wherever I go,” Dunphy informed Welles. “I cannot help myself to anything not even feed myself for my Arms are off above the elbow.” Dunphy soon received his Medal of Honor.
Dunphy moved to Wisconsin after the war. When that state’s legislature petitioned Congress to increase his pension, it noted that Dunphy was “the only person who served in the navy during the late war who lost both his arms and is living.”
Despite the heroic wartime service of men such as Dunphy, many native-born Americans continued to resent the Irish. Protestant, old-stock families thought that their Irish birth, strange accent and Catholic religion meant that these women and men could never truly be Americans. Their mere presence in the United States, xenophobes argued, would weaken and eventually destroy a nation that had been founded and settled by Protestants from England and Scotland.
If such an argument sounds familiar, it’s because contemporary xenophobes contend that immigrants from Latin American and Muslim-majority nations can never be “real Americans.” Intelligent nineteenth-century Americans rejected such fear-mongering. Intelligent twenty-first century Americans should do likewise.
John J. Dunphy’s latest book, “Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials,” includes interviews with veterans of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, who apprehended and prosecuted Nazi war criminals after World War II.