Saint Patrick’s Battalion

The Mexican conflict would catapult a general into the White House as the ongoing campaign saw young officers such as U.S. Grant and R.E. Lee sharing headlines with a deserting Cannoneer, John Riley. Cursed as a traitor by West Point Southerners who’d eventually desert the Union themselves, Riley, with his Irish blood and age-old religion, proved too strong. He joined the Mexicans, taking along hundreds of Irish-Catholic soldiers. This story is told by two teenage eyewitnesses on opposite