In August 1875, at the O’Connell centenary celebrations in Boston, three famous American abolitionists recalled the importance of O’Connell’s role in the American anti-slavery movement. John Greenleaf Whittier saw no reason to change the high opinion of O’Connell’s anti-slavery services that he had formed many years earlier; William Lloyd Garrison commented on the aid and inspiration he had always received from O’Connell; and Wendell Phillips noted how the Irishman’s actions as an agitator had influenced the abolitionists’ own concept of moral reform. Parallel celebrations in Dublin also mentioned this aspect of O’Connell’s career, but perhaps it is fitting that his anti-slavery commitment should receive greatest stress in Boston, which was not only an important Irish-American centre, but also the city with the closest links with British anti-slavery.

During the Irish war for independence from 1916 to 1921, there were three important groups involved on the Irish side against Britain. These were Sinn Féin, the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) and the I.R.B. (Irish Republican Brotherhood).

Sinn Féin became in 1917 the political arm of the republicar movement for an independent Ireland. In the December 1918 general, election, Sinn Féin candidates won seventy-three of the 103 Irish constituencies and formed Dáil Eireann in January 1919. The dáil stood apart from the military side of the national struggle until March 1921, when it accepted responsibility for the activities of the I.R.A.