Irish Nationalist, born in Dungiven, County Derry, Ireland, on the 3rd of November 1815. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, and practiced law for several years. In 1845 he became a contributor to the Irish National newspapers. In May 1848 he was convicted of high treason on account of his writings and speeches, and was sentenced to fourteen years’ banishment. He was kept one year in Bermuda and then transferred to Van Diemen’s Land. From that country he escaped in the summer of 1853. He landed in San Francisco, and afterward resided in New York. There he published his Jail Journal, a narrative of his imprisonment. He established a paper called The Citizen, in which he defended human slavery, and through this, and a controversy with the archbishop of New York, his paper failed. He edited, unsuccessfully, The Southern Citizen, in Knoxville, TN, and during the Civil War edited the Richmond Enquirer. After the war he resumed newspaper-work in New York. He returned to Ireland in 1874, and was elected to Parliament, but was not allowed to take his seat. He was the author of several works; among them, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (1861) and History of Ireland from the Treaty of Limerick (1868). He died in Cork on the 28th of March 1875.
