Thomas Addis Emmet (24 April 1764 – 14 November 1827) was an Irish and American lawyer and politician. In Ireland, in the 1790s, he was a senior member of the Society of United Irishmen as it planned for an insurrection against the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy. In American exile, he took up legal practice in New York, earned a reputation as a staunch abolitionist, and in 1812 to 1813 served as the state's Attorney General.
Early life
Thomas Addis Emmet was born in the Hammond's Marsh area of Cork on 24 April 1764. He was a son of Dr. Robert Emmet from Tipperary town (later to become State Physician of Ireland) and Elizabeth Mason of County Cork,[1] both of whose portraits are today displayed at Cork's Crawford Art Gallery. He was the elder brother of Robert Emmet, who was executed for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1803, becoming one of Ireland's most famous Republican martyrs. His sister, Mary Anne Holmes, held similar political beliefs.
Emmet was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and was a member of the committee of the College Historical Society. He later studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and was a pupil of Dugald Stewart in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returned to Ireland in 1788; but the sudden death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761–1788), a student of great distinction,[2] induced him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession.[3]
United Irishman
Emmet was a man of liberal political sympathies and became involved with the campaign to extend the democratic franchise for the Irish Parliament and to end discrimination against Catholics. He was called to the Irish bar in 1790 and quickly obtained a practice, principally as counsel for prisoners charged with political offenses. He also became the legal adviser of the Society of the United Irishmen.[3]
When the Dublin Corporation issued a declaration of support of the Protestant Ascendancy in 1792, the response of the United Irishmen was their non-sectarian manifesto which was largely drawn up by Emmet. In 1795 he formally took the test or pledge of the United Irishmen (composed by his friend, William Drennan), becoming secretary in the same year and a member of the executive in 1797.[3] By this time, the United Irishmen had been declared illegal and driven underground. Efforts to secure Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform were abandoned in favour of preparations for a republican insurrection. At odds with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and other leading members, Emmet cautioned against proceeding in advance of a French landing.[1]
British intelligence had infiltrated the United Irishmen and managed to arrest most of their leaders on the eve of the rebellion. Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on 12 March 1798 (see Lord Edward Fitzgerald), he was arrested about the same time, and was one of the leaders imprisoned initially at Kilmainham Jail and later in Scotland at Fort George until 1802. Upon his release, he went to Brussels where he was visited by his brother Robert Emmet in October 1802 and was informed of the preparations for a fresh rising in Ireland in conjunction with French aid.[3] However, at that stage, France and Britain were briefly at peace, and the Emmets' pleas for help were turned down by Napoleon.
He received news of the failure of Robert Emmet's rising in July 1803 in Paris, where because of his alleged Jacobin sympathies and complaints regarding broken French promises he had lost out to Arthur O'Connor as the favoured Irish emissary. Disillusioned with Napoleon's new imperial regime, and convinced that if it invaded Ireland it would reduce it to another of its client states, on 4 October 1804 he sailed with his family for America.[1]
On his arrival, he wrote to Robert Simms in Belfast: "France is the headquarters of fraud, deceit, despotism and under its present rulers no Nation or People who love liberty need look for its honest cooperation".[4]
Abolitionist attorney in New York
Emmet was urged to consider settling in the American South by Joseph McCormick, who had been imprisoned with him in Fort George and who eventually became a slaveholder in Georgia. Instead, protesting his "insuperable objection" to slavery, Emmet set up a legal practice in New York City and, became involved with the abolitionistSociety of Friends (the Quakers). In his first case he represented a fugitive slave, and in 1805, in a case against a ship's captain, under the federal laws against the slave trade, secured an unprecedented victory for the New York Manumission Society. Emmet (alongside fellow exile, William Sampson) continued counselling and representing the Society, without pay, until his death in 1827.[5]
His abilities and successes became so acclaimed and his services so requested that he became one of the most respected attorneys in the nation, with United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story declaring him to be "the favourite counsellor of New York."[7] He argued the case for Ogden in the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824) relating to the Commerce and Supremacy clauses of the United States Constitution.[8] Other case Emmet argued before the Supreme Court included Sixty Pipes of Brandy (23 U.S. 421) and The Schooner Andeline (13 U.S. 244).[6]
Personal life
He married Jane Patten (1771–1846), a daughter of John Patten and Jane (née Colville) Patten, in 1791.[9] Together, they were the parents of:[10]
Thomas Addis Emmet memorial obelisk, St. Paul's Chapel, Lower Manhattan, New York City
Robert Emmet, who was born in Dublin and became prominent a New York jurist and Irish American activist.[9]
Elizabeth Emmet (1794–1878), who married William Henry LeRoy (1795–1888), a son of Herman LeRoy and brother-in-law of Daniel Webster.[9]
John Patten Emmet (1795–1842), who married Mary Byrd Tucker (1805–1860) in 1827; their daughter, Jane Emmet, married merchant John Noble Alsop Griswold.[9]
Thomas Addis Emmet (1797–1863), who married Anna Riker Thom (1805–1886), daughter of John Thom and Jane Margaret Riker.[9]
In his memory a cenotaph was erected through the efforts of William Sampson and outside St. Paul's Chapel at 209 Broadway, lower Manhatten, in New York City. The inscription acknowledges a "transatlantic life in service of liberty and charity," and Emmet's role in "vindicating the rights of man in the person of the African".[17]
Descendants and legacy
Grave of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. The cross was sculpted by James and Willie Pearse, father and brother of Patrick Pearse
His grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, a prominent doctor and Irish American activist, requested that he be re-buried in Ireland so he could "rest in the land from which my family came." Dr Emmet was then interred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, the final resting place of many of Ireland's patriots, in 1922.[21] His grave marker was designed by the father and brother of the revolutionary Patrick Pearse.
An obelisk to honour the memory of Emmet, raised through the efforts of his fellow United Irish veterans and abolitionists, William Sampson and William James MacNeven,[22] stands in St. Paul's Chapel's graveyard in Lower Manhattan.[23] MacNeven was later commemorated by a matching obelisk on the far side of the church building.
^ abcSotheby's, Important Americana, Auction Catalogue, 22–23 January 2010, p. 59, lot 424, found at Sotheby's websiteArchived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 29 January 2010. An image on this page is a copy of this painting.
^Barry, Gerald J. The Sailors' Snug Harbor: A History, 1801-2001. Fordham University Press, 2000, pages 31-32
^Thomas Addis Emmet (1828–1919), Ireland under English rule, or a Plea for the plaintiff [ With the Diary of Thomas Addis Emmet (1764–1827, grandfather), while acting in Paris as the secret agent of the United Irishmen, from May 30, 1803, to March 10, 1804 ]. New York City, G. P. Putnam, 1903 (first print, see the online catalogues of the Library of Congress or the Bibliothèque nationale de France).
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