He was born
of Irish parents in the State of Ohio, in the year 1838, and at their
knees he heard of the rights and wrongs of Ireland, learned to
sympathise with the sufferings of that country, and to regard the
achievement of its freedom as a task in which he was bound to bear a
part. He grew up to be a man of adventurous and daring habits, better
fitted for the camp than for the ordinary ways of peaceful life; and
when the civil war broke out he soon found his place in one of those
regiments of the Confederacy whose special duty lay in the
accomplishment of the most hazardous enterprises. He belonged to the
celebrated troop of Morgan's guerillas, whose dashing feats of valour so
often filled the Federal forces with astonishment and alarm. In the
latter part of 1865 he crossed over to this country to assist in leading
the insurrection which was then being prepared by the Fenian
organization. He was arrested, as already stated in these pages, on
board the steamer at Queenstown before he had set foot on Irish soil;
when brought to trial at Cork, in the month of December, the lawyers
discovered that being an alien, and having committed no overt act of
treason within the Queen's dominions, there was no case against him, and
he was consequently discharged.
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