Irish deism and Jefferson's republic: Denis Driscol in Ireland and America, 1793-1810

Durey, M. (1990) Irish deism and Jefferson's republic: Denis Driscol in Ireland and America, 1793-1810. Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, 25 (4). pp. 56-76.

Abstract

Of the sixty or so Irishmen who played a significant executive role in the United Irish agitation in the 1790s and who subsequently emigrated to the United States, Denis Driscol is one of the least known. Yet Driscol's career, both in Ireland and in America, has significance and interest, for it reflects the influence of Enlightenment thought and Painite "artisan" radicalism in late eighteenth-century Ireland which fails to find focus in the careers of such more well known Irish exiles as Thomas Addis Emmet, William James McNeven, and William Sampson. Moreover, unlike many of his fellow Irish exiles, Driscol continued to promote his political and religious ideas in the United States by playing the part of a Jeffersonian propagandist in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Augusta, Georgia. An examination of Driscol's career, therefore, offers an opportunity to explore the transformation of Irish Jacobinism in the New World environment of Jeffersonian America.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Publisher:	Irish-American Cultural Institute
Publisher's Website:	http://www.iaci-usa.org/index.html
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/13967

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