arms, and an explosion at one of Emmet’s depôts in Patrick Street on the 16th of July, necessitated immediate action, and the 23rd of that month was accordingly fixed for the projected rising. An elaborate plan of operations, which he described in detail in a letter to his brother after his arrest, had been prepared by Emmet, the leading feature of which was a simultaneous attack on the castle, the Pigeon House and the artillery barracks at Island bridge; while bodies of insurgents from the neighbouring counties were to march on the capital. But the whole scheme miscarried. Some of Emmet’s bolder proposals, such as a plan for capturing the commander-in-chief, were vetoed by the timidity of his associates, none of whom were men of any ability. On the 23rd of July all was confusion at the depôts, and the leaders were divided as to the course to be pursued; orders were not obeyed; a trusted messenger despatched for arms absconded with the money committed to him to pay for them; treachery, quite unsuspected by Emmet, honeycombed the conspiracy; the Wicklow contingent failed to appear; the Kildare men turned back on hearing that the rising had been postponed; a signal expected by a contingent at the Broadstone was never given. In this hopeless state of affairs a false report reached Emmet at one of his depôts at nine o’clock in the evening that the military were approaching. Without taking any step to verify it, Emmet put on a green and white uniform and placed himself at the head of some eighty men, who marched towards the castle, being joined in the streets by a second body of about equal strength. None of these insurgents had any discipline, and many of them were drunk. Lord Kilwarden, proceeding to a hastily summoned meeting of the privy council, was dragged from his carriage by this rabble and murdered, together with his nephew Richard Wolfe; his daughter who accompanied him being conveyed to safety by Emmet himself. Emmet, now seeing that the rising had become a mere street brawl, made his escape; a detachment of soldiers quickly dispersed his followers.
After hiding for some days in the Wicklow mountains Emmet repaired to the house of a Mrs Palmer at Harold’s Cross, in order to be near the residence of John Philpot Curran (q.v.), to whose daughter Sarah he had for some time been secretly attached, and with whom he had carried on a voluminous correspondence, afterwards seized by the authorities at her father’s house. Attempting without success to persuade this lady to fly with him to America, Emmet lingered in the neighbourhood till the 25th of August, when he was apprehended by Major H. C. Sirr, the same officer who had captured Lord Edward Fitzgerald in 1798. At his trial he was defended and betrayed by the infamous Leonard MacNally (q.v.), and was convicted of treason; and after delivering an eloquent speech from the dock, was hanged on the 20th of September 1803.
By the universal testimony of his friends, Robert Emmet was a youth of modest character, pure motives and winning personality. But he was entirely lacking in practical statesmanship. Brought up in a revolutionary atmosphere, his enthusiasm was uncontrolled by judgment. Thomas Moore, who warmly eulogizes Emmet, with whom he was a student at Trinity College, records that one day when he was playing on the piano the melody “Let Erin remember,” Emmet started up exclaiming passionately, “Oh, that I were at the head of 20,000 men marching to that air!” He had no knowledge of the world or of men; he trusted every one with child-like simplicity; except personal courage he had none of the qualities essential to leadership in such an enterprise as armed rebellion. The romance of his love affair with Sarah Curran—who afterwards married Robert Henry Sturgeon, an officer distinguished in the Peninsular War—has cast a glamour over the memory of Robert Emmet; and it inspired Thomas Moore’s well-known songs, “She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,” and “Oh, breathe not his name”; it is also the subject of Washington Irving’s “The Broken Heart.” Emmet was short and slight in figure; his face was marked by smallpox, and he was described in 1803 for the purpose of identification as being “of an ugly, sour countenance and dirty brown complexion.” A few poems by Emmet of little merit are appended to Madden’s biography.
See R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times (2nd ed. 4 vols., Dublin, 1858–1860); Charles Phillips, Recollections of Curran and Some of his Contemporaries (2nd ed., London, 1822); Henry Grattan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Hon. H. Grattan (5 vols., London, 1839–1846); W. H. Maxwell, History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798; with Memoirs of the Union and Emmet’s Insurrection in 1803 (London, 1845); W. H. Curran, Life of J. P. Curran (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1822); Thomas Moore, Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (2 vols. 3rd ed., London, 1832); and Memoirs, Journals and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, edited by Lord John Russell (8 vols., London, 1853–1856). (R. J. M.)
EMMET, THOMAS ADDIS (1764–1827), Irish lawyer and
politician, second son of Robert Emmet, physician to the lord-lieutenant
of Ireland, and elder brother of Robert Emmet (q.v.),
the rebel, was born at Cork on the 24th of April 1764, and was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Edinburgh University,
where he studied medicine 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 barrister of some distinction, induced him to follow the
advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the
law as a profession. He was called to the Irish bar in 1790,
and quickly obtained a practice, principally as counsel for
prisoners charged with political offences, and became the legal
adviser of the leading United Irishmen. When the Dublin
corporation issued a declaration of Protestant ascendancy in
1792, the counter-manifesto of the United Irishmen was drawn
up by Emmet; and in 1795 he took the oath of the society in
open court, becoming secretary in the same year and a member
of the executive in 1797. Although Grattan had a profound
contempt for Emmet’s political understanding, describing him
as a quack in politics who set up his own crude notions as settled
rules, Emmet was among the more prudent of the United
Irishmen on the eve of the rebellion. It was only when convinced
that parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation were not
to be obtained by constitutional methods, that he reluctantly
engaged in treasonable conspiracy; and in opposition to bolder
spirits like Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he discountenanced the
taking up of arms until help should be obtained from France.
Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on
the 12th of March 1798 (see Fitzgerald, Lord Edward), he was
arrested about the same time, and he was one of the leaders who
after the rebellion were imprisoned at Fort George till 1802.
Being then released, he went to Brussels, where he was visited by
his brother Robert in October of that year; and he was in the
secrets of those who were preparing for a fresh rising in Ireland
in conjunction with French aid. After the failure of Robert
Emmet’s rising in July 1803, the news of which reached him in
Paris, where he was in communication with Bonaparte, he
emigrated to the United States. Joining the New York bar he
obtained a lucrative practice and in 1812–13 was attorney-general
of New York; his abilities and success being such that Judge
Story declared him to be “by universal consent in the first rank
of American advocates.” He died while conducting a case in
court on the 14th of November 1827. Thomas Emmet married,
in 1791, Jane, daughter of the Rev. John Patten, of Clonmel.
See authorities under Emmet, Robert; also Alfred Webb, Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878); C. S. Haynes, Memoirs of Thomas Addis Emmet (London, 1829); Theobald Wolfe Tone, Memoirs, edited by W. T. W. Tone (2 vols., London, 1827); W. E. H. Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv. (Cabinet edition, 5 vols., London, 1892). (R. J. M.)
EMMETT, DANIEL DECATUR (1815–1904), American songwriter,
was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio. He started the “negro
minstrel” performances, which from 1842 onwards became so
popular in America and England, and he composed a number of
songs which had a great temporary vogue. He is remembered
particularly as the writer of the famous Southern war-song
“Dixie,” which he composed in 1859.
EMMITSBURG, a town in Frederick county, Maryland,
U.S.A., 61 m. by rail W. by N. of Baltimore, and 112 m. S. of the
northern boundary of the state. Pop. (1900) 849; (1910)
1054. It is served by the Emmitsburg railway (7 m. long) to
Rocky Ridge on the Western Maryland railway. The town is
