Double Duty

THE CIVIL WAR was the perfect crucible in which young men from well-respected families could prove themselves as capable and dashing officers. Many who could have enjoyed comfortable circumstances eschewed lives of luxury for the Spartan existence of army camps. One such young man counted lawyers, distillers, the chief justice of Jamaica, and a Roman Catholic bishop among his kin. His name was Joseph O’Keeffe—an Irishman who distinguished himself in two separate conflicts.

Born in Dublin in 1841, O’Keeffe spent his early years in Canada, first in present-day Sparta, Ontario, and then Montreal. He returned to Ireland in the mid-1850s with plans to complete his education in Cork, but fate dictated otherwise.