EBOOK
About
This book is a biography of Irish American adventurer Thomas Francis Meagher (1823-67).
Meagher was an Irish revolutionary, a Tasmanian convict, an escapee to America, a leader of Irish-Americans, a public speaker, a newspaper publisher, an editor, a lawyer, an American Civil War union general before becoming acting governor of Montana. His death, aged 43, mirrored his operatic life, mysteriously drowning off a steamboat into the Missouri River and his body was never found. He also introduced the tricolour flag to Ireland.
Meagher was a leader of the Young Ireland movement which emerged during the tragedy of the Irish Famine to launch a botched 1848 revolution against British rule. For his sins he was sentenced to death before it was commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (as Tasmania was known until 1856). Though he married the daughter of an Irish convict, he escaped to New York where he was feted by a city where a quarter of the population was Irish. He became a public speaker, newspaper publisher, lawyer, and Central American adventurer, but was best known as a Union general in the America civil war where he raised the famed Irish Brigade which fought valiantly in bloody battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.
For his war service Meagher was appointed secretary of the new territory of Montana in 1865 and went out to the wild west to find the governor leaving his position by the next stagecoach, making him immediate "acting" governor and in this role he fought with politicians, vigilantes and Indians. One day in July 1967 he boarded a steamboat to collect rifles at Fort Benton on the uppermost navigable reach of the mighty Missouri river. That night he fell off the boat and disappeared into the murky waters below. His body was never found.
Meagher was an Irish revolutionary, a Tasmanian convict, an escapee to America, a leader of Irish-Americans, a public speaker, a newspaper publisher, an editor, a lawyer, an American Civil War union general before becoming acting governor of Montana. His death, aged 43, mirrored his operatic life, mysteriously drowning off a steamboat into the Missouri River and his body was never found. He also introduced the tricolour flag to Ireland.
Meagher was a leader of the Young Ireland movement which emerged during the tragedy of the Irish Famine to launch a botched 1848 revolution against British rule. For his sins he was sentenced to death before it was commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (as Tasmania was known until 1856). Though he married the daughter of an Irish convict, he escaped to New York where he was feted by a city where a quarter of the population was Irish. He became a public speaker, newspaper publisher, lawyer, and Central American adventurer, but was best known as a Union general in the America civil war where he raised the famed Irish Brigade which fought valiantly in bloody battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.
For his war service Meagher was appointed secretary of the new territory of Montana in 1865 and went out to the wild west to find the governor leaving his position by the next stagecoach, making him immediate "acting" governor and in this role he fought with politicians, vigilantes and Indians. One day in July 1967 he boarded a steamboat to collect rifles at Fort Benton on the uppermost navigable reach of the mighty Missouri river. That night he fell off the boat and disappeared into the murky waters below. His body was never found.