Thomas Paliser Russell was a founding member, and leading organiser, of the United Irishmen marked by his radical-democratic and millenarian convictions. A member of the movement's northern executive in Belfast, and a key figure in promoting a republican alliance with the agrarian Catholic Defenders, he was arrested in advance of the risings of 1798 and held until 1802. He was executed in 1803, following Robert Emmet's aborted rising in Dublin for which he had tried, but failed, to raise support among United and Defender veterans in the north.
Thomas Russell (rebel)
Caricature of Thomas Russell circa 1795
Memorial plaque, Down County Museum, Downpatrick, County Down, August 2009
Society of United Irishmen
The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association, formed in the wake of the French Revolution, to secure representative government in Ireland. Despairing of constitutional reform, and in defiance both of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division, in 1798 the United Irishmen instigated a republican rebellion. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Irish Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain.
The United Irishmen
Bastille Day, 1792, Belfast. Volunteer companies parade "The Colours of Five Free Nations, viz.: Flag of Ireland – motto, Unite and be free. Flag of America – motto, The Asylum of Liberty. Flag of France – motto, The Nation, the Law, and the King. Flag of Poland – motto, We will support it. Flag of Great Britain – motto, Wisdom, Spirit, and Liberality." Also portraits of Franklin – motto "Where Liberty is my country", and of Mirabeau – motto, "Can the African Slave Trade, though morally wrong, be politically right".
William Drennan: "what is a country properly considered but a free constitution?"
Martha McTier, "'Tis only the Rich are alarmed, or the guilty. I am neither."