*Ø* Blogmanac | Thomas Meagher and the Young Irelanders
Terrorists perhaps, freedom fighters, maybe,
remarkable, without doubt
It has well been said that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This is the story of an Irishman, Thomas Meagher, who was almost hanged and his body chopped into four pieces by the British government, for his terrorist leanings, and who went on to become Governor of Montana, USA. His fellow terrorists also had remarkable careers – but more of them in just a minute.
This is a story that history has almost forgotten.
August 3, 1823, saw the birth of Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish nationalist, and later transported convict, escapee, American Civil War general, and Governor of Montana.
In the 1840s, at the time of the great Irish famine, a party of radical Irish nationalists called the ‘Young Irelanders’ wrote articles in The Nation and The United Irishman newspapers arguing that the Irish people, if they had an Irish Parliament, could better deal with An Gorta Mor (‘the great hunger’), than could British parliamentarians sitting in London so removed from the Irish peasants dying by the hundreds of thousands.
One of the Young Irelanders who came to prominence, at a young age, was Thomas Meagher. Educated in Jesuit colleges, allowing him to receive a better education than most Catholics at the time, Meagher left college in 1843 with a reputation as a great patriot and orator. He took his fervour and oratorical ability to the Loyal National Repeal Association, the nationalist party of ‘the Great Liberator’, the elderly Daniel O'Connell. However, Meagher was of an impetuous nature and O’Connell’s devotion to non-violence could not keep Meagher in O’Connell’s ranks. The Young Irelanders had no such reservations about the use of force, and in 1848 Meagher, aged only 23, gave a firebrand speech that earned him the nickname ‘Meagher of the Sword’.
Read on, about how Meagher and the Young Irelanders went on to become convicts in Britain's most brutal penal colony, then later had careers as army generals, governors and men of other high rank in Australia, Ireland and the USA. It's all at the Scriptorium
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Terrorists perhaps, freedom fighters, maybe,
remarkable, without doubt
It has well been said that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This is the story of an Irishman, Thomas Meagher, who was almost hanged and his body chopped into four pieces by the British government, for his terrorist leanings, and who went on to become Governor of Montana, USA. His fellow terrorists also had remarkable careers – but more of them in just a minute.
This is a story that history has almost forgotten.
August 3, 1823, saw the birth of Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish nationalist, and later transported convict, escapee, American Civil War general, and Governor of Montana.
In the 1840s, at the time of the great Irish famine, a party of radical Irish nationalists called the ‘Young Irelanders’ wrote articles in The Nation and The United Irishman newspapers arguing that the Irish people, if they had an Irish Parliament, could better deal with An Gorta Mor (‘the great hunger’), than could British parliamentarians sitting in London so removed from the Irish peasants dying by the hundreds of thousands.
One of the Young Irelanders who came to prominence, at a young age, was Thomas Meagher. Educated in Jesuit colleges, allowing him to receive a better education than most Catholics at the time, Meagher left college in 1843 with a reputation as a great patriot and orator. He took his fervour and oratorical ability to the Loyal National Repeal Association, the nationalist party of ‘the Great Liberator’, the elderly Daniel O'Connell. However, Meagher was of an impetuous nature and O’Connell’s devotion to non-violence could not keep Meagher in O’Connell’s ranks. The Young Irelanders had no such reservations about the use of force, and in 1848 Meagher, aged only 23, gave a firebrand speech that earned him the nickname ‘Meagher of the Sword’.
Read on, about how Meagher and the Young Irelanders went on to become convicts in Britain's most brutal penal colony, then later had careers as army generals, governors and men of other high rank in Australia, Ireland and the USA. It's all at the Scriptorium
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Pip Wilson posted item above at 5:26 PM | Permalink
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