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It is hard to mention Thomas Russell and ignore Henry Joy M'Cracken it is hard to speak of the Insurrection of '98 and forget the gallant young Irishman who commanded at the battle of Antrim, and who perished a few weeks subsequently, in the bloom of his manhood, on the scaffold in Belfast.
He then staggered on homewards, half stupid from the strangulation scene, and very far removed from sobriety, in consequence of the copious libations of brandy he had swallowed in the course of the day and evening. "Good night, Captain Phil," cried Raymond after him; "when will you come to the hills to meet Bet M'Cracken again? Ha ha there now, that's one."
Where now should they find the Moses to lead them from the land of captivity? Tone, Fitzgerald, Emmet, Bond, M'Cracken, the Sheareses all were dead. M'Nevin, Neilson, and O'Connor were in exile. Heavily and relentlessly the arm of vengeance had fallen on them one by one; but the list was not even then completed.
He knew that the enemy would be swift in pursuit, that he must press on if he were to meet M'Cracken at Donegore. He did what he could. He went to and fro through the ranks, speaking quiet, brave words. Donald Ward, cool and determined as ever, talked of the American war. "You're young at the work, yet," he said to the disheartened men. "Wait till you've been beaten half a dozen times.
"To-morrow we march on Antrim. Drive the garrison of Randalstown before you, and hasten to form a junction with your Commander-in-Chief." Twenty-one thousand insurgents were to have rallied at the call of M'Cracken, out not more than seven thousand responded to the summons.
The insurgents fled from the fatal spot, leaving 500 of their dead and dying behind them, and at nightfall Henry Joy M'Cracken found himself a fugitive and a ruined man. For some weeks he managed to baffle the bloodhounds on his track, but he was ultimately arrested and tried by court-martial in Belfast, on the 17th July, 1798. On the evening of the same day he was executed.
He heard, as if from a great distance, as if out of some other world, his uncle's voice "The men you expected are not here, friend Finlay. M'Cracken is busy elsewhere, Munro has an engagement this evening, Hope, whom you let slip through your fingers yesterday, is not here to meet you." "I wear to you," said Finlay, "that I tried to save Hope yesterday." Donald took no notice of the words.
M'Cracken made a speech to his men an eloquent speech. Now-a-days we are inclined to look with some contempt on men who make eloquent speeches.
High above its rocks towered MacArt's fort, where Wolfe Tone, M'Cracken, Samuel Neilson, and his new friend, James Hope, with others, had sworn the oath of the United Irishmen.
. . . "As so many friends and so many strangers have said so much that is gratifying to me in public and private on this very painful subject, it would be like affectation, in writing to so old a friend as you, not to touch upon it. I shall confine myself, however, to one fact, which, so far as I know, may be new to you. "Geo. W. M'Cracken is a man and a name utterly unknown to me.
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