"Ulster As It Is" by Thomas MacKnight (1896); two unexpected United Irishmen 1798 Rebellion recollections.

Thomas MacKnight (1829-1899) was editor of the Northern Whig newspaper (DIB entry here). The first volume of his series Ulster As It Is was published in 1896, as a retrospective on his almost 30 year career, and is online here.

MacKnight advocated a non-sectarian Ulster, an alternative to the entrenched "two tribes" mentality which came to dominate around 1885/6. In the first chapter he says of himself, "I can scarcely be accused of having much sympathy with the evil spirit of sectarian and party intolerance with which Belfast and the North of Ireland have perhaps been much too indiscriminately associated".

A quick glance through shows him to have been equally critical of both extremes that were emerging.

Here are two quotes from Ulster As It Is about the United Irishmen and the 1798 Rebellion, and how that story was being claimed by Irish nationalism on the cusp of its centenary commemorations.

“I have never been able to find that the Presbyterians in the North of Ireland and others who might be considered either United Irishmen or sympathisers with them entertained what are now called Irish National views. The descendants of these men ought to know what political convictions their fathers and grandfathers held on the great Irish question of the time. They one and all told me that their ancestors at the end of the last century were not Irish Nationalists but that the most advanced of them contemplated setting up a cosmopolitan republic based on the principles enunciated in Paine's Rights of Man. … Irish Nationalists as they are now known the United Irishmen could scarcely be at that time."

“Dr Drennan who might be regarded as the poet of the United Irishmen lived near Belfast. The study in which he wrote is still pointed out in the grounds of a solicitor Mr Dinnen at Cabin Hill three miles from the town in the county of Down. Not long ago a number of Nationalists who visited Belfast thought of paying a visit to Dr Drennan's tomb but his son who recently died pointed out that his father had in 1818 made a remarkable speech in favour of Parliamentary reform. In that address the poet of the old United Irishmen stated that with Parliamentary reform and other recognised Liberal reforms granted he would be quite satisfied. His son was also always a reformer and a Liberal and when he died a decided Liberal Unionist having no sympathy with the present race of Irish Nationalists.”

 

• this 1992 article by Brian Walker '1641, 1689, 1690 and All That: The Unionist Sense of History' published in The Irish Review mentions MacKnight is really excellent in showing how history has been selectively celebrated over the centuries (you'll need JSTOR access).

• Here are two examples from it: in 1789 a cross-community procession marked the centenary of the Siege of Derry, but "rather than being seen simply as a Protestant victory, the siege was celebrated as a triumph of liberty"; the procession "included the Catholic bishop Dr Philip McDevitt and his clergy". and in 1790 the centenary of the Battle of the Boyne was "celebrated not as a great Protestant triumph but as a constitutional victory".

Maybe MacKnight's work and thinking deserves to be re-discovered. Few today even know that there ever was a vision for an "alternative Ulster" back then.