Angus R. McDonald

Angus McDonald was born on the Isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, into a family descended from Somerled, King Robert the Bruce, and the Chiefs of Clan MacDonald of Clanranald. Angus McDonald's great-grandfather was one of most important figures in the history of Scottish Gaelic literature; the war poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, alias "The Clanranald Bard",[1] who famously served as Gaelic tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart during the Jacobite rising of 1745,[2][3] which, according to literary scholar John Mackenzie, was an uprising which The Clanranald Bard's poetry had helped convince the Prince to sail to Scotland and launch.[4]

Angus McDonald at first carried on with the family's rented farm on Eigg after the death of his father.[5] When he was 24-years old,[6] he emigrated to the United States with his mother[7] and his either brother[8] or cousin[9] Allan, with whom he became one of the first settlers of Mazomanie, Wisconsin. In Mazomanie, the Allan and Angus McDonald built the town's first hotel, which they later donated to St. Barnabas Roman Catholic Church to be used as a Catholic parochial school.[10]

Camp Randall during the Civil War. Sketch made from top of University Building, 20 May 1864, by W. F. Brown, Company B, 40th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Angus R. McDonald enlisted in Company A of the 11th Wisconsin Regiment at Mazomanie on 2 September 1861.[11] Following basic training at Camp Randall, McDonald served under the command of Colonel Charles L. Harris and repeatedly, "distinguished himself by his gallantry during the operations of the Federal Army in Alabama and Mississippi."[12] Angus McDonald was later described as, "a very large and powerful man, and brave almost to the point of temerity."[13] He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on 14 July 1864.[14]

The Storming of Fort Blakeley.

During the Battle of Fort Blakeley, which was part of the Siege of Mobile, on 9 April 1865, Lieut. McDonald had drawn his sabre and was leading an advanced skirmish party in the storming of a Confederate earthenwork fortification, when a Confederate States Army officer and twelve enlisted men launched a counterattack while screaming, "No quarter to the damned Yankees!" As the Confederate attackers opened fire and indiscriminately shot down both Yankees and surrendered Rebels alike, Lt. McDonald fell with a bullet through his thigh. He was then repeatedly bayoneted by a Confederate soldier until Sgt. Daniel B. Moore of Company E picked up a fallen Rebel soldier's musket and shot Lt. McDonald's attacker dead. For this feat, Sgt. Moore was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After a 15-minute long engagement, the regimental standard of the 11th Wisconsin Regiment was planted atop the captured Fort. Lt. McDonald survived his wounds[15] and was later known as, "The Hero of Fort Blakeley".[16]

Old Abe, the live war eagle of Wisconsin, 1876. From the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

After being promoted to captain, Angus R. McDonald was mustered out of the United States Army on 15 May 1865.[17] He returned to Wisconsin and eventually settled into a shop keeping career[18] and a position at the Wisconsin State Capitol as paid caretaker to Old Abe, the tame bald eagle who had famously served as the battlefield mascot for the 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War.[19] Captain McDonald never married and died without issue in Milwaukee on 14 April 1879. His body was returned to Mazomanie, where, following a Tridentine Requiem Mass at St. Barnabas Church, he was buried in the parish cemetery with full military honors and in the presence of his weeping fellow veterans, and the direct line of the Clanranald Bard became extinct.[20]

National Memorial to Scottish-American Union Soldiers of the American Civil War, Old Calton Cemetery, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Mazomanie's Grand Army of the Republic A. R. McDonald Post #56, was named in honor of Captain Angus R. McDonald. An engraving of him is also held by the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.[21]

On 21 August 1893, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, as a memorial to the role that Scottish-American soldiers in the Union Army, like Captain Angus R. McDonald, played in the preservation of the Union and the emancipation of African-American slaves was dedicated in the Old Calton Cemetery in the city centre of Edinburgh. The statue, which still stands, is engraved with a quote from President Lincoln, "To preserve the jewel of liberty in the framework of freedom."[22][23]

More recently, literary scholar Michael Newton has cited Captain Angus R. McDonald as an example of the many voluntary recruits that the Highland Scottish diaspora in America provided in wartime to the United States military. According to Newton, "The Cameron Highlanders were formed in 1859 as a volunteer regiment in New York, drawing upon a resident force of ex-British soldiers. Although they wore the Cameron tartan kilt, they changed their uniform to standard Union regulation by the middle of their service in the American Civil War. Other Scottish regiments recruited from New York State, Illinois, [and] Maine... [also] fought in the Civil War, although details about the Gaelic dimensions of these units are still to be investigated in depth."[24]

This was rooted, according to Newton, in a deep sense of gratitude that many Highland Scots immigrants to the United States and their descendants felt towards their adopted country,[25] most particularly because Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging") after the Battle of Culloden,[26] the Highland Clearances, religious persecution of Catholics and Episcopalians, rackrenting Anglo-Scottish landlords, and how the ensuing dire poverty overwhelmingly worsened the already disastrous Highland Potato Famine[27] were all still a very recent cultural memory.

• Findagrave for Capt Angus R. McDonald, St. Barnabas Roman Catholic Cemetery, Mazomanie, Wisconsin
• From the Mazomanie Historical Society