“I went home; I put the pike on my shoulder, and gave the rifle to William (Croppy) McCarthy. It was a market day, and both of us walked through the town, and showed the people we could carry arms, so that we made the act of surrender as glorious as possible to our cause, and as disagreeable as it could be to the stipendiaries of England.
“These are small things to chronicle, but it is in small things that the enemy shows a very wary diligence to crush us. Inch by inch she pursues us, and no spark of manhood appears anywhere in the land that she has not recourse to her petty arts to extinguish it.
“In the spring of 1863, the Poles were struggling against their tyranny, and we conceived the idea of having a meeting of sympathy for them in Skibbereen, and carried it out. We prepared torchlights and republican banners, and we issued private orders to have some of our best men, in from the country. The authorities were getting alarmed, and they issued orders to have a large force of police congregated in the town on the appointed night. During the day the ‘peelers,’ as I may inoffensively call them, were pouring in, and as they passed by the several roads, the peasantry crowded in after them. The rumor went around that we were to be slaughtered, and men from the country came to see the fun. The town was full of ‘peelers’ and peasants; and, to have another stroke at the ‘big fellows’ we got handbills stuck off, calling upon the people not to say an offensive word to any of the police; that they were Irishmen, like ourselves, and only obliged from circumstances to appear our enemies. We posted these bills, and got boys to put them into the hands of police. There were six magistrates in the town; and the stipendiary one, O’Connell—a member of the ‘Liberator’s’ family—was in command of the forces. They thought to intimidate us from carrying out the programme of our procession, and we felt bound to maintain the confidence of our people by proceeding according to our announcement. They recognized in our meeting of sympathy for the Poles a meeting of organized hostility against England; they knew that bringing the masses together, and allowing them to see their strength and union would create confidence, and that is what they wanted to kill. And, to be candid, it was necessary for us to humor the peculiarities of our people some way. They are ever ready to fight; ever impatient for the ‘time,’ and when the time is long coming, they are drooping and restless without stimulants.
“The officers of arrangement moved from the committee-rooms. The committee were armed with wands, and marched in front, toward the place where the vast assembly of people were formed in line of procession with torches in their hands.
“The wives of the police, and the police themselves, had been sent to the mothers of young men on the committee, telling them that the police had orders to fire on us; and the mothers implored us, on their knees, to give up our project. We went on; and, as we proceeded to move, the magistrates came in front of us, with the police behind them, and stopped the route of our march. The Castle agent O’Connell addressing himself to Brosnahan, asked—
“Who are the leaders of this tumult?”
And the police sergeant answered—
“Here, they are sir; Dan McCartie, Mortimer Moynahan, Jerrie Crowley, Con Callahan, O’Donovan Rossa, James O’Keefe, etc.”
O’Connell—“I order this assembly to disperse.”
Committee—“For what?”