"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
And I raise a toast to the Irish Brigade's commander, the remarkable Thomas Francis Meagher:
Perhaps no other Irishman this side of St. Patrick led a more colorful life, a life that reads like a movie script and epitomizes the label "fighting Irish."
Thomas Francis Meagher (1823-1867) was an Irish revolutionary, flamboyant orator, and Union veteran of the Civil War who twice served as acting governor of Montana Territory. Exiled from the British Isles to a penal colony in Tasmania in 1848, this Irish freedom fighter soon escaped to New York City. Arriving in Montana in 1865 at the height of its gold rush, Meagher served as acting territorial governor in 1865-66 and 1866-67. His political terms are viewed by many as opportunistic and corrupt. Meagher's mysterious disappearance from a steamboat in 1867 has led to disparate theories about the cause of his death - from falling into the Missouri River while intoxicated to premediated murder by British agents.