The San Patricios (November 1995 | Volume: 46, Issue: 7)

The San Patricios

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Authors: James Callaghan

Historic Era: Era 4: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

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November 1995 | Volume 46, Issue 7

The court-martial of Captain John O’Reilly was one of 29 convened by the United States Army at the San Angel prison camp in Mexico on August 28, 1847: 36 other men of O’Reilly’s San Patricio Battalion faced courts-martial on that same day at nearby Tacubaya.

The trials were swift. The prosecution established that each of the accused men had deserted from U.S. forces and then had fought against them in the captain’s Mexican outfit. Almost every man tried at San Angel and Tacubaya was convicted and sentenced to be hanged.

“These sentences, which would have been appropriate at any time, were particularly so now,” wrote Raphael Semmes, a Navy lieutenant who had served as a volunteer with the U.S. Marines in Mexico. “There were many foreigners in our ranks … and the enemy was making every effort still to entice them away. The salvation of the army might depend upon an example being made of these dishonored and dishonorable men.”

Semmes was a devout Roman Catholic, and like others of his faith serving in the U.S. forces, he believed that the men of the San Patricio Battalion had done a great disservice to American Catholics. Semmes recalled that “the brave Irish, who remained faithful to us … were more rejoiced at the event [of the convictions] than the native-born Americans even, as they felt keenly the stigma which this conduct of their countrymen had cast upon them.”

The U.S. soldiers reserved much of their anger for the mysterious John O’Reilly, whom they regarded as the archtraitor. He was the man who had led the others astray and had been seen in the middle of the fiercest fighting from Monterrey to Churubusco. It had been proved at his court-martial that he was formerly Pvt. John Reilly of K Company, 5th U.S. Infantry, and that he had deserted from General Taylor’s army when it reached the Rio Grande in April 1846. O’Reilly offered little in the way of a defense, but that little was artful: He considered himself a Mexican national, but he had been born in Ireland. “He expects to be hung,” wrote the U.S. medical officer at San Angel, “but denies the justice of it, as he calls himself a British subject.’

If the incident at Santa Isabel could outrage the young Lincoln, perhaps it convinced John O’Reilly that he was on the wrong side of a war.

O’Reilly’s Mexican nationality was endorsed by no less a sponsor than Santa Anna, who was then negotiating with President Folk’s envoy to end the war. He wanted the survivors of the San Patricio Battalion to be guaranteed prisoner-of-war status. The prisoner’s emphasis on his Irish birth had an effect as well. The British position on nationality in 1847 was “Once a Briton, always a Briton,” and there was no such thing as naturalization. Charles Bankhead, Britain’s minister to Mexico, visited the headquarters of Gen. Winfield Scott and volunteered