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330 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
beas Corpus Act was suspended and warrants issued for the arrest of all prominent Young Irelanders not already in custody.
Furthermore, the United Irishman was suppressed, but if it was, two other papers quickly took its place, the Felon, edited by Mitchel’s brother-in-law, John Martin, and the Tribune, ed- ited by Kevin O’Doherty. The Government’s next initiative was to move on the two national papers and arrest their editors. Seeing that the authorities were determined to smash them once and for all, The Young Irelanders, although unprepared, hastily moved to mobilize. Because they were not prepared, had no plans,and no arms to speak of, and as the crops still had not been harvested, the rising they attempted proved to be a fiasco.
There were a few small military engagements, mostly at different locations in the south of the country, the most notable of which was at Ballingarry, in county Tipperary, when Wil- liam Smith O’Brien, at the head of a few hundred men engaged with the police. O’Brien’s followers, only some of whom had rifles, were routed and quickly dispersed to the hills, and he himself escaped on horseback. He was afterwards captured along with Meagher and others and confined to prison. While Charles Gavan Duffy was tried twice and acquitted, and even though Dillon escaped to America, most of the incarcerated leaders were, of course, convicted and sentenced.Smith O’Brien was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered (later commuted to life transportation), while the others, including Meagher and Kevin O’Doherty, were sentenced to be transported to the penal settlement of Van Die- men’s Land, present day Tasmania.
Like Smith O’ Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher was also sentenced to be hanged drawn and quartered, but due to a public outcry the death sentence was commuted to transporta- tion for life. During his trial he said from the dock: “I now bid farewell to the country of my birth-of my passions-of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sym- pathies-whose factions I sought to quell-whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim-whose freedom has been my fatal dream.”
Six months after he unveiled the green, white and orange flag for the first time as he stood on the second floor of the Wolfe Tone Confederate Club in Waterford city, Thomas Francis Meagher was transported-never to return. His last letter from Ireland, written prior to being transported and while he was being held in Richmond prison Dublin was to his friend John Leonard who lived in Paris. In it Meagher writes of Ireland: “Never, never, was their country so utterly downcast, so debased, so pitiful, so spiritless. Yet I do not, could not,
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