Society of United Irishmen Revolutionary and New-York Manumission Society Lawyer: Thomas Addis Emmet and the Irish Contributions to the Antislavery Movement in New York

Abstract

New York History Spring 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 193 Society of United Irishmen Revolutionary and NewYork Manumission Society Lawyer: Thomas Addis Emmet and the Irish Contributions to the Antislavery Movement in New York Craig A. Landy, Independent Scholar The year 2014 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Addis Emmet, a leader of the revolutionary Society of United Irishmen and a prominent New York lawyer following his forced exile from Ireland. Although there may have been more celebrated leaders of the movement behind the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Thomas Emmet’s unselfish desire to obtain a radical parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation earned him the recognition by Irish historian W.E.H. Lecky as, “one of the few really interesting figures connected with the rebellion.”1 In New York, Emmet devoted himself to his legal career and family, rising to the top among lawyers in the state and proving the equal of those lions of the national bar who argued before the United States Supreme Court such as William Pickney and Daniel Webster. Emmet’s reputation as an Irish patriot and his willingness to champion the cause of the newly-arrived Irish in New York endeared him to his fellow immigrants, who often turned to him for counsel and leadership. This essay explores the first case that Emmet received in New York in 1805, which involved the prosecution of the captain of a Newport, Rhode Island slave ship and traces the origins of Emmet’s antislavery beliefs in Ireland and his subsequent efforts involving slavery and the slave trade in the United States, especially his work with and for the New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated, commonly known as the New-York Manumission Society (N‑YMS). Through this first case, Emmet began the arc of his legal career in America, eventually achieving a level of success 1. W.E.H. Lecky, A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892), 4:253. 194 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY undreamed of when he first arrived. The case also frames an aspect of the radicalism spawned in the United Irish movement in Ireland and transplanted across the Atlantic in the Age of Revolution. The United Irishmen gave rise to one of the more radical movements advocating the rights of man in the Anglo-Irish world at the end of the eighteenth century. These men were radicals who, by either reform or revolution, were proponents of parliamentary change and religious equality in Ireland. In New York, the more visible former United Irishmen continued to pursue a radical path in the political arena, but on social issues, in particular, some modified their views towards slavery and race, while others held fast to their previous beliefs. This study, therefore, departs from previous examinations of the Americanization of the United Irish radical tradition in one significant way: it emphasizes a less studied segment of those American United Irishmen who arrived in New York between 1802 and 1806, including Thomas Addis Emmet, William James Macneven, and William Sampson. Their antislavery attitudes, forged in revolutionary Ireland and transplanted to America, waivered less than their fellow émigr és. This article explores why this later group’s opposition to slavery was less influenced by the process of American accommodation that affected some of the earlier-arriving former United Irishmen.2 Few historians have examined the first case Emmet received in America, which is hardly surprising given the general paucity of court records dating back to the early nineteenth century in New York. However, a fresh look at archived records, now available online, reveals that Emmet’s first case likely involved a prosecution in New York City under the federal laws against the slave trade that resulted in an unprecedented victory for the antislavery movement, a prolonged prison confinement for a young New England captain and not one, but two presidential pardons. Emmet’s first case has been hailed as the most dramatic and most difficult case prosecuted by the leading New York antislavery society in its sixty-five year history. 2. For discussion of the...