Thomas
Meagher was born in Waterford, Ireland,on
23rd August, 1823. A member of the Young Ireland Party, an organization
dedicated to Irish independence.
After a failed Irish uprising in 1848 Meagher, John
Mitchel and seven other men were found guilty of treason and sentenced
to be hung, drawn and quartered. Queen Victoria
later commuted Meagher's sentence to transportation for life.
Meagher escaped from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1852 and made
his way to the United States where he studied law and became a journalist
in New York. In 1856 he became editor
of the Irish Times.
On the outbreak of the Civil War Meagher
organised the Irish Brigade to fight for the Union
Army. He accompanied Major General Irvin
McDowell in July, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln Lincoln sent him
to take Richmond, the new base the Confederate
government. On 21st July McDowell engaged the Confederate
Army at Bull Run. The Confederate
troops led by Joseph E. Johnson, Thomas
Stonewall Jackson, James Jeb Stuart
and Pierre T. Beauregard, easily
defeated the inexperienced Union Army.
Promoted to the rank of brigadier general, his regiment was decimated
at the Battle of Chancellorsville
in May, 1863. Six months later he was placed in command of the military
district of Etowah.
After the war Meagher was appointed secretary of Montana Territory
where he served as acting governor. On 1st July, 1867, Thomas Meagher
was drowned in the Missouri River after falling from a steamboat.
(1)
D. B. Sullivan describing a speech made by Thomas Meagher at a meeting
of the Repeal Association in 1846.
Early in 1846, when the Repeal Association was still powerful, ere
yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's voice,
a well featured, graceful young gentleman rose on the crowded platform,
in Conciliation Hall, towards whom the faces of the assembly turned
in curiosity. Few of them had heard of his name; not one of them -
if the chairman, William Smith O'Brien, be excepted - had the faintest
idea of the talents he possessed. He addressed the meeting on an ordinary
topic, and at first, a seeming affectation of manner, a semi-Saxon
drawl, and a total lack of suitable gesture, produced an unfavorable
impression. He was boyish, conceited, and too fine a gentleman, the
audience thought; but, warming with his subject, and casting off the
restraints that hampered his utterances at first, he poured forth
a stream of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions,
and enriched by imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were appropriate,
he conquered all prejudices and received the enthusiastic applause
of his audience. O'Brien complimented him warmingly, and thus the
orator of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform.
When the 'peace resolutions' were introduced, Meagher found himself
called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul abhorred, - that
the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and immoral, - and
delivered a speech on that occasion, which for brilliancy and lyrical
grandeur has never been surpassed.
(2)
Thomas Meagher, speech at a meeting of the Repeal Association in 1843.
I
am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters from my limbs
while I was yet a child, and by whose influence my father, the first
Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two years
in the civic chair of my native city. But the same God who gave to
that great man the power to strike down one odious ascendancy, and
enabled him to institute in this land the laws of religious equality
- the same God who gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has
not been mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind
that I was to use and not surrender. There are times when arms alone
will suffice, and when political ameliorations call for 'a drop of
blood,' and for many thousand drops of blood. The soldier is proof
against an argument - but he is not proof against a bullet. It is
the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned
despotism. Then I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do
I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven - the Lord of
Hosts! The God of Battles - bestows his benediction upon those who
unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril.
(3)
Thomas Meagher, speech in court after taking part in the 1848 Irish
Uprising.
I
do not despair of my poor old country - her peace, her liberty, her
glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift
this island up, to restore her native powers and her ancient constitution
- this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime.
Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the
penalty of death, but the history of Ireland explains the crime and
justifies it. Judged by that history I am no criminal, and deserve
no punishment: judged by that history, the treason of which I stand
convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and
will be ennobled as a sacrifice. To my country I offer, as a pledge
of the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought
and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of the young heart;
and with that life the hopes, the honors, the endearments, of a happy,
a prosperous and honorable home. Proceed, then, with the sentence
which the law directs - I am prepared to hear it - I trust I am prepared
to meet its execution. I shall go, I think, with a light heart before
a higher tribunal - a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness,
as well as infinite justice, will preside, and where many of the judgments
of this world will be reversed.
(4)
Thomas Meagher, statement in court before being sentenced to be hanged,
drawn and quartered in 1848.
My
lord, this is our first offense, but not our last. If you will be
easy with us this once, we promise, on our word as gentlemen, to try
to do better next time. And next time ---sure we won't be fools to
get caught.
(5)
Thomas Meagher, speech when recruiting men for the Irish Brigade in
1861.
Never,
never, I repeat it, was there a cause more sacred, nor one more great,
nor one more urgent; no cause more sacred, for it comprehends all
that has been considered most desirable, most valuable, most ennobling
to political society and humanity at large; no cause more just, for
it includes no scheme of conquest or subjugation, contemplates no
disfranchisement of provincialism and inferiority.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
