A biography of "a dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, [who] led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. [Thomas Francis Meagher] escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York--the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America. Meagher's rebirth in America included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade from New York in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War--Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg"--;Last day, July 1, 1867 -- To be Irish in Ireland. Under the bootheel ; The becoming ; Poetry in action ; Pitchfork paddies ; The meanest beggar in the world -- To be Irish in the penal colony. Island of the Damned ; The traitor of Tasmania ; Flight -- To Be Irish in America. Home and away ; Identity ; The fever ; War ; First blood ; The call, the fall ; Summer of slaughter ; Reasons to live and die ; The green and the blues ; A brigade no more ; A second banishment ; New Ireland ; The remains of a life ; River without end ; Inquest for Ireland.