Thomas Francis Meagher ( MAR; 3 August 1823 – 1 July 1867) was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders in the Rebellion of 1848. After being convicted of sedition, he was first sentenced to death but received transportation for life to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in Australia.
In 1852, Meagher escaped and made his way to the United States, where he settled in New York City. He studied law, worked as a journalist, and traveled to present lectures on the Irish cause.
The widower married for a second time in New York. At the beginning of the American Civil War, Meagher joined the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was most notable for recruiting and leading the Irish Brigade and encouraging support among Irish immigrants for the Union. By his first marriage in Ireland, he had one surviving son; the two never met.
Following the Civil War, Meagher was appointed Montana's Territorial Secretary of State by President Andrew Johnson and served as acting territorial governor. In 1867, Meagher drowned in the Missouri River after falling from a steamboat at Fort Benton, Montana. Historians have questioned the circumstances around his death, with varying hypotheses including weakness from dysentery, intoxication, suicide, and murder. A 2016 analysis by Timothy Egan in The Immortal Irishman suggested Meagher may have been murdered by Montana political opponents.
Thomas Francis Meagher was born on 3 August 1823 in Waterford City in what is now the Granville Hotel on the Quay. From the age of two he lived with his family at Derrynane House in nearby Number 19, The Mall.
His father, Thomas Meagher (1796–1874), was a rich merchant who had retired to enter politics. He was twice elected Mayor of the city, which he represented in Parliament from August 1847 to March 1857. He had lived in the city since he was a young man, having migrated from Newfoundland in present-day Canada.
The senior Meagher was born in St John's, Newfoundland. His father, also named Thomas (1763–1837), had emigrated as a young man from County Tipperary just before the turn of the 18th century. Starting as a farmer, the grandfather Meagher became a trader, and advanced to merchant, and shipowner. Newfoundland was the only British colony where people of Irish descent constituted a majority of the population. The senior Thomas Meagher married a widow, Mary Crotty. He established a prosperous trade between St. John's and Waterford, Ireland. Later, the grandfather placed his eldest son Thomas in Waterford to represent their business interests. The son Thomas became a successful merchant in Waterford, whose economic success was followed by political office.
Thomas Francis Meagher's mother, Alicia Quan (1798–1827), was the second eldest daughter of Thomas Quan and Alicia Forristall. Her father was a partner in the trading and shipping firm known as Wye, Cashen and Quan of Waterford. She died when Meagher was three and a half years old, after the birth of twin girls. (One of the girls also died then; the other at age seven.) Meagher had four siblings; a brother Henry and three sisters. Only he and his older sister Christine Mary Meagher lived past childhood.
Meagher was educated at Roman Catholic boarding schools. When Meagher was eleven, his family sent him to the Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare. It was at Clongowes that he developed his skill of oratory, becoming at age 15 the youngest medalist of the Debating Society. These oratory skills would later distinguish Meagher during his years as a leading figure in Irish Nationalism. Although he gained a broad and deep education at Clongowes, as was typical, it did not include much about the history of his country or matters relating to Ireland.
After six years, Meagher left Ireland for the first time, to study in Lancashire, England, at Stonyhurst College, also a Jesuit institution. Meagher's father regarded Trinity College, the only university in Ireland, as being both anti-Irish and anti-Catholic.
The younger Meagher established a reputation for developed scholarship and "rare talents." While Meagher was at Stonyhurst, his English professors struggled to overcome his "horrible Irish brogue"; he acquired an Anglo-Irish upper-class accent that in turn grated on the ears of some of his countrymen. He became a popular speaker "who had no compare" in Conciliation Hall, the meeting place of the Irish Repeal Association.
Meagher returned to Ireland in 1843, with undecided plans for a career in the Austrian army, a tradition among a number of Irish families.
In 1844 he traveled to Dublin with the intention of studying for the bar in order to become a lawyer. He became involved in the Repeal Association, which worked for repeal of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. Meagher was influenced by writers of The Nation newspaper and fellow workers in the Repeal movement.
The movement became nationwide. At a Repeal meeting held in Waterford on 13 December, at which his father presided, Meagher acted as one of the Secretaries. He soon became popular on Burgh Quay, his eloquence at meetings making him a celebrated figure in the capital. Any announcement of Meagher's speaking would ensure a crowded hall.
In June 1846, the administration of Sir Robert Peel's Tory Ministry fell, and the Liberals under Lord John Russell came to power. Daniel O'Connell tried to lead the Repeal movement to support both the Russell administration and English Liberalism. Repeal agitation was damped down in return for a distribution of generous patronage through Conciliation Hall.
On 15 June 1846, Meagher denounced English Liberalism in Ireland, as he suspected the national cause of Repeal would be sacrificed to the Whig government. He felt the Irish would be "purchased back into factious vassalage." Meagher and the other "Young Irelanders" (the epithet used by O'Connell to describe the young men of The Nation) vehemently denounced any movement toward English political parties, so long as Repeal was denied.
The promise of patronage and influence divided the Repeal Movement. Those who hoped to gain by government positions, also called The "Tail", and described as the "corrupt gang of politicians who fawned on O'Connell" wanted to drive the genuinely ecumenical Young Irelanders from the Repeal Association. Such opponents portrayed the ecumenical Young Irelanders as revolutionaries, factionists, infidels and secret enemies of the Catholic Church. On 13 July, O'Connell's followers introduced resolutions to declare that under no circumstances was a nation justified in asserting its liberties by force of arms.
In fact, the Young Irelanders had not, until then, advocated the use of physical force to advance the cause of repeal and opposed any such policy. The "Peace Resolutions" declared that physical force was immoral under any circumstances to obtain national rights. Although Meagher agreed that only moral and peaceful means should be adopted by the Association, he added that if Repeal could not be carried by those means, he would adopt the more perilous and risky, but no less honorable choice of arms. When the Peace resolutions were proposed again on 28 July, Meagher responded with his famous "Sword Speech".