WHICH IS the unknown Dubliner who is one of the United States’ greatest military heroes and has given his name to cities and counties in 16 American states? Maj Gen Richard Montgomery died in December 1775 in the American War of Independence when he was killed leading an attack through deep snow on the British forces in Quebec. He was the highest-ranking officer in the American colonists’ Continental Army to die in the war.
Montgomery was born in 1738 at Swords. He was the son of Capt Thomas Montgomery who held a seat in the Irish House of Commons representing Donegal. Richard’s elder brother Alexander would later hold that seat and would successfully defend it in the election of 1797 with the support of the United Irishmen. Richard graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1756. He had then pursued a career as an officer in the British Army, seeing action in the Seven Year War against the French in America and Cuba.
He was sympathetic to the political radicals of his day and when he returned to England threatened to resign rather than suppress the popular agitation known as the Wilkes and Liberty campaign. John Wilkes was a British MP who was deprived of his seat and imprisoned for criticising the king. The London crowd gathered round the prison shouting “Wilkes and Liberty and damn the king”. The military opened fire on the crowd, and seven people were killed in the “St Georges field massacre” on May 10th, 1768. Montgomery’s refusal to attack civilians may have contributed to the end of his career in the British Army. In the event he sold his officer’s commission and left the army after he was passed over for promotion. He emigrated to America in 1772 where he married Janet Livingston, a daughter of a judge of the New York supreme vourt, in 1773. He bought a farm in New York State and settled down to the unexciting life of a tiller of the soil.
King George III’s declaration in 1775 that his American subjects were in rebellion changed everything for Montgomery. George Washington appealed for experienced soldiers to lead his new Continental Army. Montgomery was reluctant both to fight his old comrades and to leave his new wife.
But he felt he had a duty to defend the new American republic and signed up for the war.
Montgomery was given command of an army and ordered to attack Canada.
From September to December 1775 he overran an immense expanse of Canadian territory, capturing two British forts and the city of Montreal. His gamble to try to take Quebec proved a step too far. When word of his death reached the colonies, Thomas Paine, who later wrote The Rights of Man, described Montgomery as the first hero of the American republic.
The Montgomery family were Unitarians, liberal Presbyterians who believed in reason, freedom and tolerance in all things religious and political. Unitarians like William Drennan, Archibald Hamilton Rowan and Oliver Bond would later become leaders of the United Irishmen. A sermon preached in Strand Street Unitarian Church about the American war on the order of the British government in April 1776, in which ministers were instructed to preach passive obedience to the monarch and on the evils of rebellion, showed where their real sympathies lay.
The minister ended his sermon as follows: “When brother lifts his hand against brother, then every life that falls is an irreparable loss to the state. When kindred blood is shed, victory is ruin.” Many hearing that sermon would have thought of their own kinsman, Richard Montgomery, who had given his life fighting against his majesty’s forces. Many members of the congregation were sympathetic to the Americans and were ahead of their time in supporting: individual liberty and democracy.
Another famous Dubliner with connections to the Dublin Unitarian Church (which since 1863 has been in St Stephen’s Green) was Robert Emmet.
Unitarian minister Rev Bridget Spain recently uncovered Emmet’s signature to his sister’s marriage which took place in the church in 1779. A baptismal register which lay beside the Emmet certificate in the marriage registry records the birth of Catherine Sophie, daughter of Richard Montgomery, in November 1769.
Did Montgomery flee to America to escape the scandal of an “illegitimate” daughter in Dublin? In his 2002 book – Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero – his biographer Michael J Gabriel notes this “delicate personal problem” with a Dublin woman. It was believed that he had broken off his engagement with this unidentified woman after discovering that she had been unfaithful to him. It seems that the woman had not accepted this rejection and pressed him to fulfil his promise of marriage. Montgomery was quoted as saying she had “left no stone unturned to stagger my resolution.” Gabriel suggested that the pressure from this unknown woman was one reason why Montgomery crossed the Atlantic. He was apparently willing to acknowledge his paternity but not to become her husband.
The Death of Richard Montgomery is the subject of a highly-regarded painting by John Trumbull, painted in 1784, which hangs in the Yale Art Gallery. In his native city of Dublin there is no memorial to this Irish soldier who died fighting for the first democratic republic of the modern world.
The records of the Dublin Unitarian Church contain a vast amount of information which throws light on Protestant republicanism and radicalism in Dublin in the 18th century.
This writer has consulted these records to tell the story of how the descendants of Protestant Dissenters who came to Dublin with Oliver Cromwell remained constant to their republican principles throughout the eighteenth century and helped to establish the Society of United Irishmen in 1791.