Hidden Irish American history uncovered at Notre Dame

Irish legacy includes patriot's sword and Irish Brigade battle flag

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General Thomas Francis Meagher, known as "Meagher of the Sword"

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Notre Dame is a wonderful place to teach Irish-American history. The topic fascinates students, many of whom take great pride in their Irish heritage. The place also stands as a living monument to the rags-to-riches narrative that animates much of Irish-American identity. For many Irish Americans, the nickname “the Fighting Irish” epitomizes the mythic story that many believe defines the group. Once a term of derision, “fighting Irish” now resonates as a point of pride.

Notre Dame also holds surprises. When I was preparing a lecture on Eamon De Valera’s visit to the university during his 1919 American tour, I discovered that on the stop he viewed the Civil War sword of Thomas Francis Meagher.

Known as a leader of the failed Young Irelander rising of 1848, Meagher championed a republican movement that sought to free Ireland by any means necessary. For his efforts, “Meagher of the Sword,” as he is remembered in Ireland, escaped the hangman’s noose only to be exiled in Van Diemen’s Land. Eventually, he was smuggled on board a ship, reaching San Francisco to a tumultuous welcome, before making his way to New York. Here, in the wake of Bull Run, he would found the famous Irish Brigade.

Famine immigrants

Meagher saw no contradiction in fighting for the Stars and Stripes and fighting for Ireland. He believed, as did famine immigrants, that the cause of American freedom was Ireland’s as well.

Like the United Irish émigrés who flocked to American cities in the 1790s, Meagher believed that the true republican was at home in both nations. After the war, General Meagher became first territorial governor of Montana, a place awash in Irish immigrants. Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana presented the sword to the university in 1914.

So when De Valera laid eyes on that sword at Notre Dame a little more than 50 years after Meagher had brandished it in battle, he was gesturing toward what he regarded as a vital relationship between Irish and American freedom, one that the American-born De Valera epitomized. 

When he visited places like Notre Dame, he was traveling as President of the Irish Republic fighting for its freedom. But he was also journeying through his homeland – a different country, to be sure, but one that Irishmen and women had fought for.

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