Written for the third anniversary of the Easter Rising, Jim Larkin pays tribute past Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet, and compares him to Padraic Pearse, martyr of 1916.

‘Robert Emmet and Padriac Pearse’ by Jim Larkin from The Irish Felon (Duluth). Third Year of the Irish Republic. Easter Sunday, 1919.

Robert Emmet was born in Cork, March 4th, 1778, his family were of English stock They were of the professional class, and took no active part in the political movements of the time, both of his pa rents being members of the Church of England. Emmet when a boy was for some years educated at home, while in his teens, he was entered at Trinity College, his pa rents intending that he should study for the bar. Emmet to the surprise of many, including friends of his father, who held professorships In the College, instead of following the orthodox conservative line, associated with a small group which Included Tom Moore, the poet, who had become noteworthy for their sympathy with and study of the new philosophy then being promulgated by Jean Jacques Rosseau and other encyclopedists of France. Before reaching his majority he was expelled from Trinity College because of the opinions he held as to the divine right of kings and ether fetish ideas which then, as now, obsessed the minds of the peoples of Europe.

Emmet was a studious and brilliant student and had delved deeply into the field of philosophy, political and economic. He had also engaged himself studying military history and tactics. After getting expelled from college he went to live with his elder brother at Fort George in the North of Scotland, and then for some time travelled extensively through the countries of Europe, and was confidant and intimate with the exiled members of the United Irishmen who had taken refuge in Paris. He joined the United Irishmen in 1798 in a house now occupied as a tailor’s shop in Middle Abbey street, Dublin, being sworn in by Russell, who was known as the “Man from God-knows-where.” Emmet was for some time engaged in conveying dispatches to and from the heads of the organisation in France. After the abortive rising in 1798, Emmet with others for a time lay quiescent, but the death of his father having given him possession of certain money, he took a house in Patrick street, Dublin, gathered some of the boys together, and started to manufacture arms and munitions. Owing to the lack of knowledge of some of the members of the organisation an explosion occurred; this only spurred Emmet on, and instead of residing outside of Dublin, as he formerly did, he took up his residence on the premises, so that he might personally supervise the manufacture of the rockets and hand grenades and other explosive agencies necessary for the movement. In a letter which he wrote to a friend at this time he said: “I have little time to look at the thousand difficulties which stand between me and the completion of my wishes. That these difficulties will disappear, I have an ardent and I trust rational hope. But if it is not to be the case, I thank God for having gifted me with a sanguine disposition, to that disposition I run from recollection, and if my hopes are without foundation–if a precipice is opened under my feet, from which duty will not suffer me to run back, I am grateful for that sanguine disposition which leads me to the brink and throws me down, while my eyes are still raised to those visions of happiness which my fancy has formed in the air.”

Some measure of the courage of the man can be understood when you realise that practically all the leaders of the ’98 rising had been executed, jailed or exiled, and practically all the middle class supporters had withdrawn, and Emmet’s following in the bulk consisted of the artisan and labouring classes, that class which never yet failed Cathleen ni Houlihan. And it is a singular coincidence, as in 1916, the movement extended outside the borders of Ireland, having adherents in Scotland, England and France and developed with surprising rapidity, and unlike the rising which preceded it, was remarkable for the fact that it was remarkably free from the curse of all revolutionary movements, the paid spy and traitor. The same feature was exemplified to a greater extent in the rising of 1916; this is due, in our opinion, to the fact that both were practically working class revolutions.

The failure of the Emmet insurrection of July 23rd, 1803, the day appointed, was due to misunderstanding in part, if not wholly, to the fact that the orders were given verbally and not in writing. And in some measure to the regrettable incident that occurred which was unforeseen, a section of the insurgents marching to their rendezvous accompanied by Emmet, were followed by a mob who had gathered from the slums abutting on High street. By some untoward fate they chanced to meet a carriage containing Lord Kilwarden, the chief justice of Ireland, his daughter and the Reverend Mr. Wolfe. An altercation ensued with the driver of the vehicle. Somebody raised the cry it was Castlereagh in the carriage, and the mob attacked the occupants. In the melee Lord Kilwarden and Mr. Wolfe were killed. Emmet, attracted by the shouting, rushed the men he was leading to the scene and rescued the daughter of Lord Kilwarden. A riot ensued, and Emmet, incensed at the want of control of the mob, withdrew from the scene, instead of proceeding to the rendezvous, and in bitter anguish and humiliation retired to the Wicklow Hills.

For some time he remained in hiding and later returned to Dublin and took refuge in Dolphin’s barn in the house of Ann Devlin, His purpose being to get in touch with the sweetheart Sarah Curran, the daughter of John Philpot Curran, who lived at the Hermitage, and here we have another striking coincidence between the rising of 1803 and that of 1916. The house where Sarah Curran lived with her father at the back of which Emmet made his tryst with Sarah Curran the path oversheltered by trees, along which Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran walked arm in arm in close communion, he eloquently and tenderly explaining his plans, and arranging his future activities, was the home of Padriac Pearse, which he carried on as a school known as St. Enda’s College. The path is still called Emmet’s path, and Padriac Pearse, like his prototype Robert Emmet, walked in the shade of many an evening with troubled mien, yet filled with high hope and exultation. The only difference between these two great high-souled men was that Emmet shared his love with Ireland and Sarah Curran, but the only love of Padriac Pearse’s life was the Dark Haired Rosaleen.

Varying accounts are given of the arrest of Emmet. Some say that he refused to make his escape from the country before seeing Sarah Carran to whom he was betrothed, and owing to his determination to accomplish this, information of his presence in the vicinity was conveyed to the authorities and he was arrested. As a matter of fact, Robert Emmet met Sarah Curran many times at the rendezvous of which we have spoken heretofore as Emmet’s path. During the weeks that intervened between the rising and his arrest he urgently persuading her to go with him to France or America. She could not bring herself to leave her father, who was suffering from domestic affliction and ill health. We pause here to draw our readers’ attention to the wonderful fidelity and devotion of Ann Devlin, in whose home Robert Emmet was sheltered, and who was the go-between for Robert Emmet and Sarah Carran. She was arrested by the brutal Yeomanry, tied to the shafts of a cart and outraged in a most brutal manner for refusing to betray the man she had nursed as a child. This brave, heroic woman sad to relate, in after years died in abject poverty. Despite the loyalty of his friends by an unfortunate mischance Emmet was taken, tried by that unspeakable fiend Lord Norbury and sentenced to deaths and executed in a most brutal manner He was decapitated outside St. Catherine’s Church, James Street, Dublin. The brutal soldiery took the poor bleeding head which in life had dreamed great dreams and kicked it like a football down Bridgefoot Street.

No authoritative information can be had as to what became of the body. Some say it was taken and buried in St. Werburgh’s Church, close to the grave where Lord Ed ward Fitzgerald was interred. Excavations have been made in various other portions of Dublin where it has been stated his remains were buried, but no trace was found. No knowledge nor documentary evidence can be produced as to his last resting place, but we do know that his spiritual sepulchre is in the hearts of all true Irishmen and women who believe in the principles for which Emmet laid down his young and beautiful life, and though dead in the flesh, he speaketh to the living Ireland for all time. His life and death have inspired millions in the immediate past and will continue to be an inspiration to those who are left to bring to an accomplishment the work which he had put his hand to, to realise in the fullness of time the dream of all those who went before Emmet and those who like the men who died in Dublin in their glorious sacrifice his achievement in death. Well and truly has it been said, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the revolution.” The ground on which the blood of Emmet poured forth in such generous abundance in Dublin City is well worthy to be the seed bed of the men and women who will yet give back to Cathleen ni Houlihan her four fair fields. Every street, lane and byway of Dublin City speaks eloquently of the great dead, who walked them filled with high hope and determination, but none among their number exceeded Robert Emmet (who has well been called “The Darling of Erin”) in beauty of body and mind, in brilliancy of intellect and high-souled idealism. For he gave all that man can give, youth and love and life, to the dear, dark haired one, Rosaleen Dhu, and in the cause of human liberty.

A single issue produced by Irish soon-to-be-supporters of the Communist Labor Party in Duluth, Minnesota on the third anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rebellion. It includes the Proclamation, the Last Statements of Pearse, Sean McDermott, and James Connolly, Emmet and Pearse by Jim Larkin, Irish Literature by HL Mencken, Robert Emmet’s Manifesto, ‘The Rights of Ireland’ from 1848’s Irish Felon, as well as poems, photos, and literature advertisements.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

Access to full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/…/oclc/23468148/1919-04-20/ed-1/seq-1