The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became An American Hero, Egan - B+

         Thomas Francis Meagher was born on August 3, 1823 in Waterford Ireland, a place where being Irish had been a virtual crime for seven centuries. Edmund Burke, an 18th century statesman describing the institutions of Ireland said: "A machine of wise and elaborate contrivance as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people and the debasement in them of human nature itself as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." A colleague of de Tocqueville observed: "I have seen the Indian in the forest and the negro in his chains and thought I saw the the very extreme of human wretchedness, but did not know the condition of unfortunate Ireland. An entire nation of paupers is what never was seen until it was shown in Ireland."

        Meagher's circumstances were very different because his grandfather emigrated to Newfoundland, and returned to Waterford a very wealthy man. Thus, Thomas attended an excellent Catholic college in England, read law in Dublin for awhile, and fell in with the young rebels coming of age in Ireland. The summer of 1845 saw a blight destroy the potato crop that fed almost all of the land's peasants. The English landlords grew corn, wheat and barley. Over a billion-and-a-half bushels of those grains were exported to England. While Ireland, a place not allowed a vestige of self-government, starved, the UK's indifference bordered on genocide. Indeed, the official in charge of famine relief praised the Malthusian diminishment of the population. Outraged by what he saw, Meagher became the radical proponent of 'Ireland for the Irish' and spoke of the need to emulate what the Americans had done. His oratorical skills were exceptional. He toured the country espousing the radical ideas of the Young Irish and garnering the attention of the occupiers. He designed the flag that would someday be the Republic's and participated in a brief flare-up at Ballingarry. He was one of ten men arrested and tried for sedition, but the Crown's plans were undone when one Catholic made it onto the jury. A new ex post facto Treason Felony law was passed by Parliament featuring execution or transportation for any nationalist convicted under its terms. He was arrested on August 12, 1848 . After a week-long trial, he was condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered. An international outpouring on behalf of Meagher and four others led to their sentences being commuted to transportation for life. He was sent to Tasmania, and would never see Ireland again.

        It took 112 days to reach Australia, where the UK had already sent 40,000 Irish.  Because of the notoriety of Meagher and a handful of other political's, they were not put to forced labor but were allowed freedom. The price was a promise to not try to escape. He fell in love with, and soon married, a young governess, Catherine Bennett, in February, 1851. Frustrated by a life without freedom, he wrote a letter to the governor resigning his parole and announcing he was escaping. He rode a horse to the coast, and was picked up by a trader, and arrived in NYC in 1852. He was free, famous, and in a country that offered sanctuary to former prisoners of the British. 

      Of New York's 600,000 inhabitants, fully one-fourth were newly-arrived Irish. On his second night in the city, he was serenaded by 7,000. The Irish diaspora wanted him to free their homeland. Everyone from local barmen to the US president wanted to meet him. He began to speak in public in the city and throughout the north about the plight of the Irish and his experiences in jail. He spoke on behalf of Democratic candidates and was invited by Franklin Pierce to his inauguration. His wife and his father, still a member of the British parliament, visited him in NY. The hurly-burly was too much, and they returned to Ireland, where Catherine died in childbirth. His namesake son would be raised in Waterford by his father. By this time, Britain had ended transportation, provided a dollop of self-government in Australia, and had pardoned the political's it had condemned a few years earlier. However, excluded from the pardon were the few escapees who would never be allowed back. He fell in love again, and married a local woman. However, this time it was the Presbyterian daughter of an established and very wealth family, Elizabeth Townsend. He became a citizen and a lawyer.

  New York's Irish voted Democratic in 1860, and were clearly not sympathetic to the plight of the Negro. Nonetheless, Meagher joined the NY Militia's 69th Regiment and went off to war. Expectations among the Union generals was that the Irish might do a bit better than Blacks. At Bull Run, they were sent into the foray late in the day, but were repulsed, and Meagher had his horse shot out from under him. In William Tecumseh Sherman's report, he said that the"sewage from the city" had fought admirably. Meagher returned to NY and began recruiting. He saw the war as an opportunity to prove to the Americans the value of the Irish. He also wanted to train men for what he hoped would be a later fight for Ireland against Britain. By the following year, he was a brigadier general in charge of a much larger and better equipped Irish Brigade.  Both the general and the brigade excelled on the Peninsula, and garnered praise from McClellan. The Brigade suffered terrible losses at Antietam and began losing its support in NY, as the church had come out against freeing the slaves. Meagher's enthusiasm for the war began to fade.  He was despondent by the time of Fredericksburg. The battle proved to be the bloodiest day of the Irish Brigade's war. The Brigade was shattered, unpaid, suffering from dysentery, down to 500 men, and Meagher had an infected abscess in a knee. Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863 was his last battle. He would no longer send Irishmen to war. He resigned his commission.

        The NYC draft riots that summer tarnished the reputation of the people Meagher had spent years building up. By repudiating the war and killing negroes, the Irish were once again outcasts and Meagher, for continuing to support the war, was a pariah among his own people. Lincoln asked him to return and he finished the war in a backwater Tennessee post, drinking heavily. He and Elizabeth decided to leave behind NY and head west. President Johnson appointed him Secretary of the Montana Territory. The day he arrived in Virginia City, the governor resigned and appointed him acting governor. Montana of 1865 was a lawless place where vigilantes ruled. His two years in Montana were an unpleasant series of confrontations with the vigilantes and the Indians. His dream of bringing the Irish from the cities to the mountains had offended everyone out west. In the summer of 1867, he was broke, ill, and on a riverboat on the Missouri near Ft. Benton. On the night of July 1, he fell overboard and his body was never found. He was mourned in America, Australia, and Ireland. In 1905, the citizens of Montana erected a bronze equestrian statue with words chiseled on the side from a speech he had made in Ireland. In 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy presented the Irish Parliament with the green battle flag the Brigade had carried at Fredericksburg.

        This is an excellent book, and an amazing story.  I suggest that anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them  read the first few chapters. Egan sets forth the most eloquent depiction of the insidious policies of the English that I have ever read. I intentionally used the word genocide above, and believe that it is the most apt description of the UK's policies. And as for Meagher, his biography reads like a novel - a well-written one at that.