The same year Woodward joins the office of Sir Thomas Deane and becomes a partner in 1851 along with Deane’s son, Thomas Newenham Deane. It seems that Deane looks after business matters and leaves the design work to Woodward.
The work of Deane and Woodward is characterised by naturalistic decoration with foliage and animals carved into capitals and plinths around windows and doors. It is extolled by John Ruskin in particular when he visits the Museum at Trinity College, Dublin. Woodward collaborates in particular with the O’Shea brothers, James and John, who are stone carvers from County Cork. They, along with London sculptors, carve the abundant decorative stonework at Trinity, showing owls, lizards, cats and monkeys, as well as other flora and fauna. Later the O’Sheas carve stonework at the Kildare Street Club, including the famous window piece showing the club members as monkeys playing billiards. Some stories tell of the O’Sheas getting into trouble and possibly even being sacked for carving cats or monkeys at the Oxford University Museum.
Fay attends Belvedere College in Dublin. He works for a time in the 1890s with a touring theatre company in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. When he returns to Dublin, he works with his brother Frank, staging productions in halls around the city. Finally, they form W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, focused on the development of Irish acting talent.
The brothers participate in the founding of the Abbey Theatre and are largely responsible for evolving the Abbey style of acting. After a falling-out with the Abbey directors in 1908, the brothers emigrate to the United States to work in theatre there.
Fay moves to London in 1914, working as an actor on stage and in films. One of his most notable film roles is as Father Tom in Carol Reed‘s Belfast-set Odd Man Out (1947), whose cast is dense with actors from the Abbey Theatre. His memoir, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre, appears in 1935.
Willie Fay dies in London on October 27, 1947, at the age of 74.
(Pictured: William George Fay 1903, Dublin City Council Image Galleries, http://www.dublincity.ie)
Mitchel is the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin and obtains a law degree in 1834.
In the spring of 1836 Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.
Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishmen, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.
In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, in June 1853, he escapes to the United States.
Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.
In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.
Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.
Morgan O’Connell, soldier, politician and son of the Irish Nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator of Ireland, is born in Dublin on October 31, 1804. He serves in the Irish South American legion and the Imperial Austrian Army. He is MP for Meath from 1832 until 1840 and afterwards assistant registrar of deeds for Ireland from 1840 until 1868.
O’Connell, one of seven children (and the second of four sons) of Daniel and Mary O’Connell, is born at 30 Merrion Square, Dublin. His brothers Maurice, John and Daniel are also MPs.
In 1819, self-styled General John Devereux comes to Dublin to enlist military aid for Simón Bolívar‘s army to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. He succeeds in forming an Irish Legion, to be part of Bolivar’s British Legions. O’Connell, encouraged by his father, is one of the officers who purchases a commission in it even though he is only 15 years old. The enterprise is mismanaged; there is no commissariat organisation on board the ships, and a part of the force die on the voyage. The remainder are disembarked on the Spanish Main at Margarita Island, where many deaths take place from starvation eight days after the Irish mutineers leave for Jamaica.
Bolivar, who had noted his pleasure at the departure of “these vile mercenaries,” is too astute a diplomat to offend the son of his Irish counterpart. O’Connell is accorded the appropriate privileges of his rank, and toasts are drunk to the health of his father, the “most enlightened man in all Europe.” A portion of the expedition, under Francis O’ Connor, effects an alliance with Bolivar, and to the energy of these allies the republican successes are chiefly due.
Bolivar makes sure that the untrained Irish lad stays out of danger. “I have numberless hardships to go through,” said Bolivar, “which I would not bring him into, for the character of his father is well known to me.” But ceremonial duties soon bore the restless young Irishman. After a year at Bolivar’s headquarters Morgan leaves for Ireland.
If South America did not satisfy O’Connell’s taste for adventure, he has more than his fill on the return journey. He survives a bout of tropical fever and is shipwrecked twice in succession, ending up stranded in Cuba. A schooner captain, who turns out to be a long-lost Irish cousin, rescues him. After the captain is killed in a fight with his boatswain, he hitches a ride to Jamaica on a Danish ship commanded by a skipper from Cork. From Jamaica, another Irish officer offers Morgan passage home.
Arriving in January 1822, O’Connell is greeted by his proud father as a prodigal son returned. His South American adventure, declares Daniel O’Connell, has made a man of Morgan. Otherwise, said O’Connell, “it would have been difficult to tame him down to the sobriety of business.” After his return to Ireland, he again seeks foreign service in the Austrian army.
On December 19, 1832, O’Connell enters parliament in the Liberal interest, as one of the members for Meath, and continues to represent that constituency until January 1840, when he is appointed first assistant-registrar of deeds for Ireland, at a salary of £1,200 a year, a position he holds until 1868. In politics he is never in perfect accord with his father, and his retirement from parliament is probably caused by his inability to accept the Repeal movement.
During his parliamentary career O’Connell fights a duel with Lord William Arden, 2nd Baron Alvanley, a captain in the British Army, at Chalk Farm, on May 4, 1835. A challenge had been sent by Alvanley to O’Connell’s father, who, in accordance with a vow he had made after shooting John D’Esterre, declines the meeting. The younger O’Connell thereupon takes up the challenge on his father’s account. Two shots each are exchanged, but no one is hurt. Afterwards, in December 1835, he receives a challenge from Benjamin Disraeli, in consequence of an attack made on Disraeli by O’Connell’s father. He declines to meet Disraeli.
On July 23, 1840, O’Connell marries Kate Mary, youngest daughter of Michael Balfe of South Park, County Roscommon.
Morgan O’Connell dies at 12 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 20, 1885. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on January 23.
(Pictured: Morgan O’Connell, oil on canvas, artist unknown, c. 1819/20)
Ireland’s first passenger railway, the Dublin and Kingstown Railway (D&KR), opens on October 9, 1834. It links Westland Row in Dublin with Kingstown Harbour (Dún Laoghaire) in County Dublin. The D&KR is also notable for a number of other achievements besides being Ireland’s first passenger railway. It operates an atmospheric railway for ten years, claims the first use of a passenger tank engine and is the first railway company to build its own locomotives.
Construction begins on a new harbour at Dunleary village in 1817 that soon begins to attract traffic due to silting problems elsewhere around Dublin Bay. Proposals for canal or rail infrastructure links to Dublin are variously proposed through to the 1830s. James Pim takes the initiative and commissions a plan by Alexander Nimmo which is presented as a petition to the House of Commons on February 28, 1831 for a rail line from near Trinity College Dublin to the west pier at the Royal Harbour of Kingstown under a company to be known as the D&KR. A bill is presented and is progressing but is scuppered by a prorogation of parliament and an election. A fresh bill receives Royal assent on September 6, 1831.
A meeting of D&KR subscribers on November 25, 1831 at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce includes the submission of a long report which indicates that Westland Row is to be the Dublin terminus and that the enterprise is initially to focus on passenger traffic with a high train frequency.
The construction contract is awarded to William Dargan, with Charles Blacker Vignoles as engineer. The construction contract is signed on May 7, 1833 and is completed in about 18 months. The railway proves expensive to build with the final cost being a little under £60,000 per mile. Thomas Grierson, the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford Railway (DW&WR) chief engineer comments in a presentation to the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland in 1887 that speed of construction is remarkably short and leads to “many failures in masonry, bridges, etc.”
On October 4, 1834 the first recorded train with invited passengers is hauled by the engine Vauxhall and runs as far as the Williamstown Martello Tower at what is now Blackrock Park before returning. The engine Hibernia on October 9, 1834 hauls another train of invited passengers composed of eight carriages the entire length of the line and back. Plans are made to introduce a service on October 22, 1834 but storms and flooding damage the line including wrecking the bridge over the River Dodder and this leads to delays for repairs. A timetabled regular service is introduced from January 1835.
On June 30, 1856 the Dublin and Wicklow Railway (D&WR) takes over operation of the line from the D&KR with the D&KR continuing to lease out the line. The D&WR had formerly been known as the Waterford, Wicklow, Wexford and Dublin Railway (WWW&DR or 3WS). It changes its name to the Dublin Wicklow and Wexford Railway (DW&WR) in May 1860 and is ultimately renamed the Dublin and South Eastern Railway (D&SER) in 1907, a name which is retained until the amalgamation of the D&KR and D&SER with the Great Southern Railways on January 1, 1925. As of 1974, its independent existence of over 90 years by a railway company is only exceeded in the British Isles by the Great Western Railway and the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway.
(Pictured: Sketch of Second Class Carriage on the Dublin and Kingstown Railway by E. Heyden, with Patent Spiral spring Buffer, as invented by T.F. Bergin)
Corby is born to Daniel Corby, an Irish immigrant, and his wife Elizabeth, a Canadian. He attends public school until age 16, then joins his father’s real estate business. In 1853, he enrolls in the 10-year-old college of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and begins study for the priesthood three years later. Following ordination, he teaches at Notre Dame and serves as a local parish priest.
Corby leaves his position at Notre Dame and joins the predominately Catholic Irish Brigade in 1861. He spends the next three years as chaplain of the 88th New York Volunteer Infantry, which is one of the five original regiments in the Irish Brigade. He is perhaps best known for giving general absolution to the Irish Brigade on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Of the Brigade’s original 3,000 men, only about 500 remain. Of the men Corby absolves that day, 27 are killed, 109 are wounded, and 62 are listed as missing. The scene of Corby blessing the troops is depicted in the 1891 painting Absolution under Fire by Paul Wood, and dramatized in the 1993 film Gettysburg. His memoir of the Irish Brigade becomes a best-seller.
Following his service in the Civil War, Corby returns to Notre Dame and serves as its vice-president (1865–1866) and twice as its president (1866–1872, 1877-1881). Under his first administration, enrollment at Notre Dame increases to more than 500 students. In 1869 he opens the law school, which offers a two-year course of study, and in 1871 he begins construction of Sacred Heart Church, today the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame. The institution is still small, and he teaches in the classroom and knows most students and faculty members. In 1869, the entire student body and the faculty present him with the gift of a black horse and, when he leaves the presidency three years later, they present him with a matching carriage.
Corby becomes president again following the short term of Fr. Patrick Colovin. When he returns to the presidency, Notre Dame has not yet become a significant academic institution. His presidency sees the April 1879 fire that destroys the old Main Building of the school. He sends all students home and promises that they will return to a “bigger and better Notre Dame.” He overcomes the $200,000 fire loss and rebuilds the Main Building, which now stands with its “Golden Dome.” During his administration, he also constructs Washington Hall, in which he takes much pride, and starts the construction of St. Edward’s Hall for the minims program.
In addition to his presidency, Corby is also serving as the Holy Cross Provincial, when Rev. Edward Sorin, who had become Superior General of the Congregation, writes to him to tell him that he will have to relinquish one of his positions. He wants to remain president but is overruled by Sorin. Famous throughout the U.S. Catholic world as chaplain for the Irish Brigade, known as the “Fighting Irish,” it may be that the nickname followed Corby back to Notre Dame, where it stuck.
A statue by Samuel Murray, depicting Corby with right hand raised in the gesture of blessing, stands upon the same boulder at the Gettysburg Battlefield on which the priest stood while blessing the troops that second morning of the battle. It is the first statue of a non-general erected on the Gettysburg Battlefield, and is dedicated in 1910.
Corby is widely remembered among military chaplains and celebrated by Irish American fraternal organizations. Corby Hall at Notre Dame is named for him, and a copy of the Gettysburg statue stands outside the building. An organization of Notre Dame alumni is named The William Corby Society.
(Pictured: Statue of Father William Corby by Samuel Murray, Gettysburg Battlefield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
Francis Llewellyn Harrison, better known as “Frank Harrison” or “Frank Ll. Harrison” and one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist, is born in Dublin on September 29, 1905. Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turns to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.
Harrison is the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May (née Nash). He becomes a chorister at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1912 and is educated at the cathedral grammar school and Mountjoy School. A competent organist, he is deputy organist at St. Patrick’s from 1925 to 1928. In 1920, he also begins musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studies with John Francis Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano). In 1926, he graduates Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and is awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19. He then works in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St. Canice’s Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.
In 1930, Harrison emigrates to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 1933, he studies briefly with Marcel Dupré in France but returns to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa. In 1935, he takes a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of “resident musician” at Queen’s University at Kingston. His duties include giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music is the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen’s. He resigns from St. George’s in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen’s in 1942. During his years in Canada, he still pursues the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter’s Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).
In 1951, Harrison takes the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and becomes lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–1970) there. In 1965, he is elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. From 1970 to 1980, he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.
Harrison also holds Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–1959), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–1969), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972). He also briefly returns to Queen’s University at Kingston as Queen’s Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and is Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.
Harrison’s honorary titles also include Doctor of Laws at Queen’s University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985). At Queen’s also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) is partly named in his honour.
In 1989, Harry White appreciates Harrison as “an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused.” David F. L. Chadd writes of him “He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries.”
Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Irish Research Council Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.
Salmon, the son of Michael Salmon and Helen Weekes, spends his boyhood in Cork, where his father is a linen merchant. There he attends Hamblin and Porter’s Grammar School before attending Trinity College in 1833, graduating with First Class Honours in mathematics in 1839. In 1841 he attains a paid fellowship and teaching position in mathematics at Trinity. In 1845 Salmon is additionally appointed to a position in theology at the university, after having been ordained a deacon in 1844 and a priest in the Church of Ireland in 1845.
In the late 1840s and the 1850s Salmon is in regular and frequent communication with Arthur Cayley and J. J. Sylvester. The three of them together with a small number of other mathematicians develop a system for dealing with n-dimensional algebra and geometry. During this period, he publishes about 36 papers in journals.
In 1844 Salmon marries Frances Anne Salvador, daughter of Rev. J. L. Salvador of Staunton-upon-Wye in Herefordshire, with whom he has six children, of which only two survive him.
In 1848 Salmon publishes an undergraduate textbook entitled A Treatise on Conic Sections. This text remains in print for over fifty years, going through five updated editions in English, and is translated into German, French and Italian. From 1858 to 1867 he is the Donegall Lecturer in Mathematics at Trinity.
In 1859 Salmon publishes the book Lessons Introductory to the Modern Higher Algebra. This is for a while simultaneously the state-of-the-art and the standard presentation of the subject, and goes through updated and expanded editions in 1866, 1876 and 1885, and is translated into German and French. He also publishes two other mathematics texts, A Treatise on Higher Plane Curves (1852) and A Treatise on the Analytic Geometry of Three Dimensions (1862).
In 1858 Salmon is presented with the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy. In June 1863 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society followed in 1868 by the award of their Royal Medal. In 1889 he receives the Copley Medal of the society, the highest honorary award in British science, but by then he has long since lost his interest in mathematics and science.
From the early 1860s onward Salmon is primarily occupied with theology. In 1866 he is appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College, at which point he resigns from his position in the mathematics department. In 1871 he accepts an additional post of chancellor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
Salmon is Provost of Trinty College from 1888 until his death in 1904. The highlight of his career is likely when in 1892 he presides over the great celebrations marking the tercentenary of the College, which had been founded by Queen Elizabeth I. His deep conservatism leads him to strongly oppose women receiving degrees from the University.
Salmon dies at the Provost’s House on January 22, 1904, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin. An avid reader throughout his life, his obituary refers to him as “specially devoted to the novels of Jane Austen.”
Salmon’s theorem [ru] is named in honor of George Salmon.
Corcoran is the only child of Thomas Corcoran, an officer in the British Army, and Mary McDonagh. Through his mother, he claims descent from Patrick Sarsfield, hero of the Williamite War in Ireland and leader of the Wild Geese. In 1846 he takes an appointment to the Revenue Police, enforcing the laws and searching for illicit stills and distilling activities in Creeslough, County Donegal. He also joins a guerrilla group called the Ribbonmen.
On August 30, 1849, Corcoran emigrates from Sligo to the United States and settles in New York City where he finds work as a clerk in the tavern owned by John Heaney, whose niece, Elizabeth, he marries in 1854.
Corcoran enlists as a Private in the 69th New York Militia. By 1859 he is appointed colonel of the regiment. The regiment is a state militia unit at the time composed of citizens, not soldiers, and is involved in the maintenance of public order. On October 11, 1860, he refuses to march the regiment on parade for the 19-year-old Prince of Wales, who is visiting New York City at the time, protesting the British imposition of the Irish Famine. He is removed from command and a court martial is pending over that matter when the Civil War begins.
Corcoran also becomes involved in Democratic politics at Tammany Hall. He becomes district leader, a member of the judicial nominations committee, an elected school inspector for his ward, and a member of the Fourteenth Ward General Committee. He is one of the founders of the Fenian Brotherhood in America.
With the outbreak of war, the court martial is dropped and Corcoran is restored to his command because he had been instrumental in bringing other Irish immigrants to the Union cause. He leads the 69th to Washington, D.C. and serves for a while in the Washington defenses building, Fort Corcoran. In July 1861 he leads the regiment into action at the First Battle of Bull Run and is taken prisoner.
While Corcoran is imprisoned, the United States makes threats to execute captured Confederateprivateers. Corcoran and several other Union prisoners are selected by lot for execution if the United States carries out its threats against the privateers. This event is known as the Enchantress Affair, but no executions are ever carried out by either side. Corcoran is then offered a parole under the conditions that he does not take up arms against the Confederacy. Intending to resume his place in the Union army upon his release he refuses the offer of parole. He is appointed Brigadier General of volunteers in July and exchanged in August 1862. His role in the Enchantress Affair and his refusal for parole gains him some attention and upon his release he is invited to dinner with President Abraham Lincoln.
In April 1863 Corcoran is involved in an incident that ends with Corcoran shooting and killing Edgar A. Kimball, commander of the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Corcoran attempts to pass through the 9th New York’s area without giving the required password after receiving the challenge from a sentry. When Kimball intervenes on the side of the sentry, Corcoran shoots him. Corcoran is not charged with a crime or reprimanded and continues to serve.
Corcoran returns to the army and sets about recruiting more Irish volunteers. He raises and takes command of what becomes known as the Corcoran Legion. Placed in command of the 1st Division, VII Corps he is engaged in the Battle of Deserted House and takes part in the Battle of Suffolk. In late 1863 he is placed in command of a division in the XXII Corps and returns to serve in the Washington defenses. While riding alone in Fairfax, Virginia he is thrown from a runaway horse and suffers a fractured skull. He dies at the age of 36 at the William Gunnell House on December 22, 1863.
New York City MayorMichael Bloomberg unveils Ireland’s national monument to the Fighting 69th in Ballymote on August 22, 2006. The monument is sculpted by Philip Flanagan. The inscription around the top of the monument reads “Michael Corcoran 1827–1863” Around the base is inscribed “New York Ballymote Creeslough Bull Run.” Underneath the monument is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, donated by the family of Michael Lynch, who died in the tower on September 11, 2001. Lynch’s family are also from County Sligo.
Davis is born in Mallow, County Cork, on October 14, 1814, the son of a Welsh father, a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, and an Irish mother. Through his mother he is descended from the Gaelic noble family of O’Sullivan Beare. His father dies one month after his birth and his mother moves to Warrington Place near Mount Street bridge in Dublin. In 1830, they move to 67 Lower Baggot Street. He attends school in Lower Mount Street before studying at Trinity College, Dublin. He graduates in Law and receives an arts degree in 1836, before being called to the Irish Bar in 1838.
Davis gives a voice to the 19th-century foundational culture of modern Irish nationalism. Formerly it is based on the republicans of the 1790s and on the Catholic emancipation movement of Daniel O’Connell in the 1820s-30s, which has little in common with each other except for independence from Britain. Davis aims to create a common and more inclusive base for the future. He establishes The Nation newspaper with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon.
He writes some stirring nationalistic ballads, originally contributed to The Nation and afterwards republished as Spirit of the Nation, as well as a memoir of Curran, the Irish lawyer and orator, prefixed to an edition of his speeches, and a history of King James II‘s parliament of 1689. He has formed many literary plans which are unfinished at the time of his early death.
Davis supports O’Connell’s Repeal Association from 1840, hoping to recreate the old Parliament of Ireland. They split during a debate on the proposed new Queen’s University of Ireland, when Davis is reduced to tears by O’Connell’s superior debating skill. Davis is in favour of a university that would inclusively educate all Irish students. O’Connell and the Catholic hierarchy prefer a separate system for Catholic students within Ireland that would remain under church control.
O’Connell generally refers to his inexperienced allies as “Young Ireland,” initially as a dismissive term, that from the 1870s becomes the accepted term for nationalists inspired by Davis. He also prefers a federal arrangement with Britain in the 1840s while Davis seeks a greater degree of autonomy. Both agree that a gradual and non-violent process is the best way forward. Despite their differences, O’Connell is distraught at Davis’s early death.
Davis is a Protestant but preaches unity between Catholics and Protestants. To him, it is not blood that makes a person Irish, but the willingness to be part of the Irish nation. He is to the fore of Irish nationalist thinking and it has been noted by later nationalist notables, such as Patrick Pearse, that while Theobald Wolfe Tone laid out the basic premise that Ireland as a nation must be free, Davis is the one who built this idea up promoting the Irish identity.
seamus dubhghaill 