Daniel Coburn is based on John Mitchel, an attorney and journalist, founder of the nationalist newspaper Young Ireland.
He was an early follower of Daniel O’Connell, and the leader of the Repealers. Coburn rejected O’Connell’s policy of non-violence and founded the Young Irelanders, campaigning for direct action against the landlords and insurrection against English rule. ‘Irish soil for the Irish.’
After the failed uprising in 1848, he was charged with sedition and treason, convicted and sent to the penal colony in Bermuda. He was later transferred to a prison on Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
Coburn escaped to America and founded the Irish-American newspaper The Citizen.
He supported the South in the American Civil War, based in Richmond Virginia. Three of his sons fought for the Confederates.
He returned to Ireland in 1875, and was elected Member of Parliament, but this was invalidated because he was a convicted felon.
Mitchel County, Iowa, is named in his honour.
He died in 1875, aged 60.
William Smith O’Brien was born of an aristocratic family in Dromoland in 1803, a descendant of Brian Boru, an eleventh-century king of Ireland. He was a Protestant and an MP, and also an ardent Irish nationalist, co-founder, with Mitchel, of the Young Irelanders.
Convicted of treason after the failed uprising of 1848, he was sentenced to be hanged but this was later commuted to life imprisonment and he was sent to Van Diemen’s Land, where he met Mitchel again.
He was released in 1856 on condition that he would never returned to Ireland.
After a stay in Brussels, he was allowed to return to Ireland.
O’Brien never involved himself in politics again and died in 1864, aged 61.
Thomas Meagher was born in 1823, the son of the mayor of Waterford.
A member of the Younger Irelanders, he was convicted of sedition following the failed 1848 uprising. He was sentenced to be hanged but this was commuted to transportation for life to the penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land.
In 1852, he escaped to America, and lived and worked in New York as a journalist.
During the American Civil War he supported the Union, and recruited and led the Irish Brigade, where he was promoted to brigadier general.
After the war he was appointed acting governor of Montana Territory.
Meagher drowned in 1867, after falling from a steamboat in the Missouri at Fort Benton, aged 44. His body was never recovered.
Gavan Duffy, son of a grocer, was born in Monaghan in 1816.
Journalist and later attorney, he founded The Nation, an Irish nationalist newspaper. He was a follower of Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal Association, but he left along with Mitchel, O’Brien and Meagher to form the Young Irelanders.
Charged with sedition, he was convicted and sentenced, but won on appeal to the House of Lords. Despairing of the continuing famine and negative prospects for Irish independence, he emigrated to Australia and became Premier of Victoria in 1871.
He was knighted in 1873, retired from politics and lived in France. He died in Nice in 1903, aged 86.
Sir William Macaulay, is based on Sir Randolph Routh, born in Poole, Dorset, in 1782.
He did military service in Jamaica, the Netherlands in the Welcheren Campaign, the Peninsular War, the Battle of Waterloo. He was promoted to Commissariat General of the British Army in 1826. He spent seventeen years as Colonial Administrator in Canada and was knighted in 1843. In 1845 Prime Minster Peel appointed him Chairman of the Irish Relief Commission. He was frequently at odds with Sir Charles Trevelyan.
Routh died in 1858, aged 76.