Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 151

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(NEW YORK CITY.) Principles and By Laws of the Mitchel Guard, Company A, Irish Rifles. 20 pages. 64mo, 3 x 2¼ inches, original printed wrappers, minor wear; vertical fold; uncut. New York: J.H. Ferguson, 1853
Request Condition Report Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

New York's Irish population exploded in the 1840s with refugees from the Great Famine. Many brought Irish nationalist politics with them. The Irish Republican Union was a militia unit formed in New York; it became the Irish Fusileers or Irish Rifles. In 1850, Company A was formed as the Mitchel Guards, named after nationalist hero John Mitchel (1815-1875). Mitchel had advocated for active resistance to the export of crops to England during the famine, which earned him a 14-year penal colony sentence; he escaped from Australia to America in 1853.

The Mitchel Guard and other Irish-American companies were soon incorporated into the New York State Militia as the 9th Regiment. "The appearance of an entire State Regiment wearing their beloved green, marching down Broadway with all the glory of military precision and power on St. Patrick's Day, 1851, aroused such martial enthusiasm that a second Irish regiment, the Sixty-Ninth, was formed the following year . . . the purpose of the association was an armed invasion of Ireland"--O'Dea, "History of the Ancient Order of Hibernians," page 915.

This tiny volume expresses its Irish nationalism overtly: "Believing we owe a sacred duty to the land that gave us birth (Ireland) and having full faith in her future, believing that God is true and merciful, we firmly hope in his ultimate recognition of the justice of her cause." No other examples have been traced, in OCLC or at auction.

Also in This Catalogue