After his defeat in the 1828 presidential election John Quincy Adams was faced with a crisis of self-confidence which, in an unusual move for an ex-President of the United States, he met by re-entering political life as a congressman and by reconfirming his own moral and ethical stance as an Adams through the medium of … Read more
Sir, —Desmond Fennell (HI 13.5, Sept./Oct. 2005) avoids the Dark Agesentirely when the Church so ruthlessly imposed its dedication tosuperstition and ignorance that the Celtic Church in Ireland,sufficiently remote to escape the worst of its baneful influence, hadto rescue continental Europe. The protection of Charles the Baldallowed the best of those pioneers, the critical-thinking Irish … Read more
Sir, —Jim Jordan (Letters, HI 11.4, Winter 2003) has provided useful background on the ethnic conflicts that partly lay behind the New York draft riots (see my article in HI 11.3, Autumn 2003). It is of course quite normal to embed the riots in a wider narrative like Noel Ignatiev’s How the Irish became white. … Read more
Sir, —Anyone who was worried after Hiram Morgan left his position as joint editor of History Ireland that the magazine would lose its objectivity under the sole editorship of Tommy Graham and become much more Republican in tone should be alarmed by the last issue (HI 13.6, Nov./Dec. 2005). Graham takes a full paragraph in … Read more
Through American and Irish wars: the life and times of General Thomas W. Sweeny, 1820–1892 Jack Morgan (Irish Academic Press, £19.50) ISBN 0716528134 Thomas Francis Meagher: the making of an Irish American John M. Hearne and Rory T. Cornish (eds) (Irish Academic Press, £19.50) ISBN 0716528134 The American Civil War, even more than the Revolutionary … Read more