In August 1845, a young fugitive slave arrived in Dublin to oversee the publication of his bestselling life story, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Seven years earlier, Douglass had escaped from slavery, but the Fugitive Slave Act meant that he remained in danger of being captured and returned to

On September 20th, 1803, twenty-five-year-old Robert Emmet was executed for leading an abortive Irish rebellion; his grave was unmarked to erase his name from history. At his sentencing, a stoic Emmet delivered one of the most memorable speeches of the 19th century, asking the world to leave his name and his tomb in obscurity until

Between 1820 and 1920, about five million Irish crossed the Atlantic. Almost all faced formidable challenges, but the wave of two million arriving between 1845 and 1860 in the wake of the famine encountered especially difficult conditions. Decades of scholarship have documented the hardships of the famine migrants, including crushing poverty, hard labor for low

In 1867 forty Irish American freedom fighters, outfitted with guns and ammunition, sailed to Ireland to join the effort to end British rule. They never got a chance to fight as British authorities arrested them for treason as soon as they landed, sparking an international conflict that dragged the United States and Britain to the

Ernie O'Malley was a medical student in Dublin when the Irish Rebellion broke out in April 1916. He immediately joined the fray in Dublin and was quickly promoted in the ranks of the IRA as a GHQ organizer who traveled around Ireland. Eventually, as Commandant-General, he was put in charge of three counties. Though he