A year after the failure of his July 1848 rebellion in Tipperary, William Smith O’Brien found himself in a small cottage, isolated from other convicts, on Maria Island, Van Diemen’s Land. He now had the leisure to write a long-postponed autobiography, which has recently been discovered. Family background Proud of his descent from the great … Read more
If you enjoyed the first instalment of David A. Wilson’s Thomas D’Arcy McGee biography (HI 16.6, Nov./Dec. 2008, reviews, p. 65), you’ll want to take a look at this second and concluding volume. Picking up the story from McGee’s 1857 arrival in Montreal, the author remains fundamentally sympathetic to his subject while avoiding the temptation … Read more
Sir, —As a Confederate re-enactor, you can imagine how interested I wasto read the May/June issue’s article on Irish nationalist/southernsecessionist John Mitchel. Having experienced severe difficulty infinding reliable, detailed information on his service to theConfederate states, I was pleasantly surprised. James Quinn is to becongratulated, as his article is extremely insightful and a credit toyour … Read more
When Charles Hart (1824?-98), a Young Irelander from Dublin, was inWashington in March 1849 during a tour of the United States he took theopportunity to pay a visit to Matilda Tone, the elderly widow ofTheobald Wolfe Tone. Born in Dublin on 17 June 1769, she first arrivedin America in 1795 in the company of her … Read more
Not many leaders of armed rebellions in Ireland during the centuries of English rule had the opportunity to mull over their actions in later days. One who did was William Smith O’Brien, leader of the abortive Young Ireland rebellion of 1848, who spent five years, most of them on ticket-of-leave, in what was then Van … Read more