February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In the early 1840s, Daniel O’Connell was still very much Ireland’s leading nationalist. Known as “The Liberator” for his successful campaign to achieve Catholic Emancipation in 1829, he now embarked on a campaign to repeal the Act of Union. Enacted in 1801, the Act had dissolved the Irish Parliament and made Ireland part of the United Kingdom. In 1840 O’Connell founded the Repeal Association and launched a grassroots campaign, similar to the one he waged in the 1820s, to mobilize the Irish people. By 1843 several of his so-called “monster rallies” attracted more than 300,000 people.
The movement attracted the attention of a group of young, university-educated Irish nationalists. Three of them, Thomas Davis, Gavan Duffy, and John Blake Dillon, founded a nationalist newspaper called The Nation in 1842. Week after week the paper espoused the views of this eclectic group of Catholic and Protestant activists. Inspired by similar nationalist movements on the Continent, they championed a new sense of Irish nationality, where a revived Irish culture would overcome the longstanding divisions among Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter. Believing that Ireland constituted a distinct culture and nationality, these members of “Young Ireland” (as their movement became known) were ardent supporters of O’Connell’s Repeal Movement.
Within a few years, however, a rift developed between Young Ireland and old O’Connell. The latter grew increasingly leery of Young Ireland’s enthusiastic non-sectarianism and their talk of outright independence (he favored home rule under the crown). Young Irelanders, for their part, feared that O’Connell was too willing to compromise on the issue of repeal. The official break came in July 1846 when Young Irelanders rejected O’Connell’s ultimatum that they renounce the use of physical force in their struggle for Irish freedom. Even though no one had called for armed insurrection, O’Connell’s ultimatum prompted a walkout by members of Young Ireland (after Thomas Francis Meagher’s stirring speech celebrating “the sword”) and the subsequent formation of the Irish Confederation.
By early 1848, as the Famine ravaged the Irish countryside, a Young Irelander named John Mitchel called for open rebellion against British rule. He was convinced that the suffering of the Famine would produce a mass peasant uprising. In March 1848 he was joined by William Smith O’Brien, who called for the formation of an armed National Guard to defend Ireland against British repression. When Mitchel was arrested and transported to a prison colony in May, Smith O’Brien decided to lead an armed insurrection.
In late July 1848, Smith O’Brien gathered a small, armed force in Tipperary. To their dismay, the anticipated mass uprising of embittered peasants failed to materialize — Young Irelanders had planned poorly and the Famine had wrought too much havoc. On July 29, 1848, a contingent of police clashed with Smith O’Brien’s force in a cabbage patch. Two men died before the rebels fled in the face of military reinforcements. The rebellion of Young Ireland had ended almost as soon as it began. Smith O’Brien and several others were arrested, convicted, and exiled to a penal colony in Tasmania.
Pathetic by the standards of Irish insurrections both before and after, the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 did have a lasting impact. For one thing, it reestablished the physical force tradition of Irish nationalism to challenge O’Connell-style constitutional nationalism in the future. In addition, it allowed later generations of nationalists to point with pride to the fact that the Ireland did not passively accept the oppressive policies of Britain during the Famine. Finally, the rebellion of 1848 produced a generation of exiled nationalists — in Australia, Canada and the United States — who committed themselves to waging a more successful rebellion in the future.
HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK
July 28, 1939: Judy Garland records “Over the Rainbow” for Decca Records, a song destined to be a huge hit in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”
July 31, 1893: Eoin MacNeill and others found the Gaelic League, an organization dedicated to promoting a revival of Gaelic culture, especially the Irish language.
Aug. 1, 1870: Prime Minister William Gladstone gains passage of the first of many Land Acts that over the next 50 years progressively dismantle British landlordism in Ireland.
HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES
July 28, 1943: Presidential candidate, New Jersey Senator, and New York Knicks star Bill Bradley is born in Crystal City, Mo.
July 29, 1953: Emmy Award-winning writer/producer/director Ken Burns is born in Brooklyn.
July 30, 1863: Auto maker and assembly line inventor Henry Ford, is born in Greenfield Township, Mich.