History: Most Young Irelanders were essentially repealers propelled by circumstances, including their sense of honour, into a hopeless insurrection. Nonetheless, John Hearne's attempt to turn "Meagher of the Sword" into a "reluctant revolutionary" is unconvincing.
The really reluctant rebel, William Smith O'Brien, was persuaded by Meagher and John Blake Dillon to lead the 1848 rising.
Hearne concludes his article in this book of essays: "The move towards revolutionism had to a large degree been initiated by O'Connell and his glorification of "historic" violence, a characteristic that adorned the monster meetings. Moreover, it was the apparent subservience and appeasement that characterised the Clontarf climbdown that created the Repeal Association's soft underbelly and made it an easy target for criticism." Presumably, this passage means Daniel O'Connell used the threat of force and his bluff was called when the Clontarf meeting was proscribed. This threat was intrinsic to the struggle against British domination, however, and O'Connell's repeal agitation never recovered from the 1843 debacle.
A comparison between the youthful O'Connell and Meagher would have been a more fruitful investigation. It is not widely known that, while avoiding active involvement in the United Irish conspiracy, O'Connell flirted with revolution in the 1790s. After the 1798 bloodbath, he followed a strictly constitutional path.
Like O'Connell, Meagher was talented, flamboyant and ambitious; unlike the Liberator, crucially, he was reckless. When Meagher buckled on his sword-belt in July 1848, against the wishes of his O'Connellite father, he crossed the Rubicon.
Hearne claims Meagher led a procession of 20,000 into his native Waterford city after a demonstration on Slievenamon, and that "the preservation of social order was his priority". But according to the Nation report, Meagher, wearing his "splendid tricolour sash", told the assembled multitude: "This land, which is yours by nature and by God's gift, is not yours by the law of the land. There are bayonets, therefore, between the people and their rightful food. Are you content that the harvest of this land . . . should again be reaped for the stranger?" He was escorted from the mountain by thousands of peasants on horseback, amid "intense excitement"; at Ballypatrick he took leave of his Tipperary friends and proceeded to Waterford "with the members of the Clancassan Club".
Be that as it may, an alarmed British administration announced the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland and thus precipitated the rising. Willie Nolan's essay on The Final Days of Meagher's Irish Uprising reflects his intimacy with the Tipperary countryside and the historical background.
The editors' assertion that "the most important phase of Meagher's political career" followed is, however, unsustainable. After his escape from Van Diemen's Land to the United States in 1852, Meagher did become an icon in an Irish-American community trying desperately to win acceptance. When the Civil War erupted he formed an Irish Brigade to help defend the American Union. He was a courageous general and the years of patriotic gore affected him deeply. Nevertheless, as Rory Cornish writes in his article, "he was clearly not the most successful of the 12 Irish-born Union generals . . . Thomas William Sweeny of Co Cork was undoubtedly more successful as a general than Meagher would ever be."
David Emmons writes incisively about Meagher's inglorious death. He probably fell off a steamboat into the Missouri river while ill rather than drunk; it "remains a possibility" that he was pushed by vigilantes who hated his Irish Catholic guts.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Meagher blazed like a meteor across the Irish sky in 1848 and burnt out in exile. In the spring of that year of revolutions in Europe, he returned from Paris with a Tricolour of green, white and orange, which he presented to the Irish people as a symbol of "new life". Therein lies the chief significance of this romantic nationalist.
Jack Morgan's biography of "Fighting Tom" Sweeny confirms that Irish-American nationalism exercised a powerful influence on Fenianism in the 1860s. The folly of invading Canada was rooted in American expansionism as well as Irish disaffection. Strained Anglo-US relations at the end of the Civil War provided a fertile ground for the heated Fenian imagination. An estimated 150,000 Irishmen had served in the Union forces, while 40,000 fought for the Confederacy. Filled with bitter memories of the Famine, many were imbued with the spirit of Fenianism.
Following the suspension of habeas corpus (again) in Ireland, the direct-action message of the one-armed war hero, Sweeny, and the senate faction of the Fenian Brotherhood made headway among the rank-and-file. But the "invasion" collapsed as Fenian incompetence and British resolve ended US ambiguity.
Sweeny's biographer should have asked whether this "spirited, tough and intrepid adventurer" would have become Fenian "secretary of war" if he had not been relieved of his US army command for striking a superior officer.
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is an Irish Times journalist and the biographer of John Blake Dillon
Thomas Francis Meagher: The making of an Irish American Edited by John M Hearne and Rory T Cornish Irish Academic Press, 254pp. €55hk/€25pk
Through American and Irish Wars: The Life and Times of General Thomas W Sweeny, 1820-1892 By Jack Morgan Irish Academic Press, 171pp. €55hk/€25pk