Patrick Robert Guiney (15 January 1835 in Parkstown, County Tipperary, Ireland – March 21, 1877 in Boston) was an American Civil War soldier.
The young Guiney worked as a wheel boy in a rope factory, and at the age of fourteen apprenticed to a machinist in Lawrence, Massachusetts, but stayed only a year and a half before returning to Portland.
His depleting finances caused him to leave after about a year, despite the fact that the college president offered to make some arrangement for him to stay, which, according to Guiney's daughter, his honor would not allow him to accept.
Guiney's book-loving father having meanwhile died, he went to study for the Bar under Judge Walton, and was admitted in Lewiston, Maine, in 1856, taking up the practice of criminal law.
[2] Familiar with the Manual of arms, Guiney enlisted for example's sake as a private, refusing a commission from Governor John A. Andrew until he had worked hard to help recruit the 9th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
Here, after three successive color-bearers had been shot down, the colonel himself reportedly seized the flag, threw aside coat and sword-belt, rose white-shirted and conspicuous in the stirrups, inspired a final rally, and turned the fortune of the day.
On February 21, 1866,[4] President Andrew Johnson nominated Guiney for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general, to rank from March 13, 1865, for gallant and meritorious services during the war.
[4] Kept alive for years by nursing, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress on a sort of "Christian Socialist" platform, was elected assistant district attorney (1866–70), and acted as consulting lawyer (not being longer able to plead) on many locally celebrated cases.