Thomas Francis Meagher

Thomas Francis Meagher

Thomas Francis Meagher was born in the City of Waterford, Ireland, on August 3, 1823. At the age of 11 years he was placed under the care of the Jesuits, at Clongoweswood, County Kildare, where he displayed studious tendencies and oratorical talents. He was then sent to Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, England, under that same order. After an elaborate course of general study, including classics, mathematics, history and literature, he completed his education in 1843. His first appearance in public life is thus described by Mr. D. B. Sullivan, M. P. :

" Early in 1846, when the Repeal Association was still powerful, ere yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's voice, a well featured, graceful young gentleman rose on the crowded platform, in Conciliation Hall, towards whom the faces of the assembly turned in curiosity. Few of them had heard of his name; not one of them - if the chairman, William Smith O'Brien, be excepted - had the faintest idea of the talents he possessed. He addressed the meeting on an ordinary topic, and at first, a seeming affectation of manner, a semi-Saxon drawl, and a total lack of suitable gesture, produced an unfavorable impression. He was boyish, conceited, and too fine a gentleman, the audience thought; but, warming with his subject, and casting off the restraints that hampered his utterances at first, he poured forth a stream of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions, and enriched by imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were appropriate, he conquered all prejudices and received the enthusiastic applause of his audience. O'Brien complimented him warmingly, and thus the orator of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform. When the 'peace resolutions' were introduced, Meagher found himself called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul abhorred, - that the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and immoral, - and delivered a speech on that occasion, which for brilliancy and lyrical grandeur has never been surpassed. Alluding to O'Connell he said:

"'I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters from my limbs while I was yet a child, and by whose influence my father, the first Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two years in the civic chair of my native city. But the same God who gave to that great man the power to strike down one odious ascendancy, and enabled him to institute in this land the laws of religious equality - the same God who gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has not been mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind that I was to use and not surrender... There are times when arms alone will suffice, and when political ameliorations call for 'a drop of blood,' and for many thousand drops of blood. ... The soldier is proof against an argument - but he is not proof against a bullet... It is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism... Then I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven - the Lord of Hosts! The God of Battles - bestows his benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening on which, in the valley of Bethulia, He nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day, in which He has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, His almighty hand has ever been stretched forth, from His throne of light, to consecrate the flag of freedom - to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defense, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has, at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword - stigmatize the sword? No, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrections of Innsbruck! Abhor the sword - stigmatize the sword? No, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quiverings of its crimsoned light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic - prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the sword - stigmatize the sword? No, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium - scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps - and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish water of the Scheldt."

"I learned it was the right of a nation to govern itself, on the ramparts of Antwerp; I learned the first article of a nation's creed, upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. I honor the Gelgians for their courage and their daring, and I will not stigmatize the means by which they have obtained a citizen King, a chamber of deputies."

This was all he was allowed to say, for though the audience were electrified and applauded enthusiastically, moral force resolutions were passed, and O'Brien, Meagher, Duffy, Reilly and Mitchel left the hall forever. Thenceforth "Meagher of the Sword," a designation typical of his leonine courage, ancestral escutcheon, and a presage of his military career in the United States, became the virtual leader of "Young Ireland." In 1848 he was one of the three delegates appointed to present an address of congratulations to the French Republican Government, and, in a speech delivered before his departure, he counseled his countrymen to send a deputation to the Queen, asking her to convene the Irish Parliament in the Irish capital.