Editing Robert Emmet (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Eire Robert Emmet.jpg|thumb|Robert Emmet was honoured on two [[Postage stamps of Ireland|Irish postage stamps]] issued in 1953, commemorating the 150th anniversary of his death]]
Emmet’s rebellion infuriated Lord Castlereagh because he "could not see the change that his own great measure the Union has effected in Ireland".<ref name=":5" />  Despite having so badly misfired, the 1803 rising suggested that the [[Acts of Union 1800|Act of Union]] was not going to be the palliative Castlereagh and [[William Pitt the Younger|Prime Minister William Pitt]] had intended. Castlereagh advised that "the best thing would be to go into no detail whatever upon the case, to keep the subject clearly standing on its own narrow base of a contemptible insurrection without means or respectable leaders",<ref name=":5" /> an instruction Plunket appears to have followed in Emmet's prosecution. This was to be a stance taken not only by [[Unionism in Ireland|unionists]].

[[Daniel O'Connell]] who was to lead the struggle for [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829|Catholic Emancipation]] and for repeal of the Union in the decades following Emmet's death, roundly condemned the resort to "physical force".  O'Connell's own programme of mobilising public opinion, fuelled by sometimes violent rhetoric and demonstrated in "monster meetings",  might have suggested that constitutionalism and physical force were complementary rather than antithetical.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Swift|first=John|date=2008|title=Review of Reinterpreting Emmet: Essays on the Life and Legacy of Robert Emmet|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25660568|journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review|volume=97|issue=386|pages=232–235|jstor=25660568|issn=0039-3495|access-date=13 June 2021|archive-date=13 June 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613225455/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25660568|url-status=live}}</ref> But O'Connell remained content with his dismissal of Emmet in 1803 as an instigator of bloodshed who had forfeited any claim to "compassion".<ref>O'Connell Correspondence, Vol I, Letter No. 97</ref>

Emmet's political rehabilitation begins in the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Famine]]-years of the 1840s with the [[Young Ireland]]ers. In 1846 they had finally broken with O'Connell declaring that if Repeal could not be carried by moral persuasion and peaceful means, a resort to arms would be "a no less honourable course".<ref>O'Sullivan, T. F. (1945). ''Young Ireland''. The Kerryman Ltd. pp. 195-6</ref> The Young Irelander publisher [[Charles Gavan Duffy (Australian politician)|Charles Gavan Duffy]] repeatedly reprinted Michael James Whitty's popular chapbook ''Life, Trial and Conversations of Robert Emmet Esq.'' (1836), and promoted R.R. Madden's ''Life and Times of Robert Emmet'' (1847) which, despite its devastating account of the Thomas Street fiasco, was hagiographic.<ref name=":4" />

In carrying forward the tradition of physical-force republicanism from the debacle of the Young Irelander "[[Young Ireland rebellion|Famine Rebellion]]" in 1848, the [[Irish Republican Brotherhood]] (the [[Fenian]]s) also carried forward admiration for Emmet. On the $20 bonds they issued in 1866 in the United States in the name of the Irish Republic, his profile appears opposite that of Tone.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fanning|first=Charles|date=2004|title=Robert Emmet and Nineteenth-Century Irish America|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20646472|journal=New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua|volume=8|issue=4|pages=53–83|jstor=20646472|issn=1092-3977|access-date=13 June 2021|archive-date=13 June 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613225452/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20646472|url-status=live}}</ref>

Robert Emmet's older brother, [[Thomas Addis Emmet]] emigrated to the United States shortly after Robert's execution. He eventually served as the [[New York State Attorney General]]. His descendants (who included the prominent American portrait painters [[Lydia Field Emmet]], [[Rosina Emmet Sherwood]], [[Ellen Emmet Rand]], and [[Jane Emmet de Glehn]]) helped advance his standing among the Irish diaspora, which in turn may have been one factor in ensuring that he was one among the "ghosts" invoked in the run-up to [[Easter Rising|1916 Easter Rising]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mitchel|first=Angus|date=2013-02-22|title=Robert Emmet and 1916|url=https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/robert-emmet-and-1916/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-06-13|website=History Ireland|archive-date=18 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418104034/https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/robert-emmet-and-1916/}}</ref>

In the Emmet Commemoration speech he delivered in [[New York City]] in March 1914, [[Patrick Pearse|Pearse]] described how the spirit of Irish patriotism called in Emmet "to a dreamer" and  "awoke a man of action"; called to "a student and a recluse" and brought forth "a leader of men"; "called to one who loved the ways of peace" and found "a revolutionary". Emmet was a man unwilling to "surrender of one jot or shred of our claim to freedom even in return for all the blessings of the British peace". His attempt in 1803 was to be regarded, not as a failure but as "a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality".<ref name=":11">{{Cite web |last=Pearse |first=Patrick |date=2 March 1914 |title=Robert Emmet and the Ireland of to-day. An Address delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York |url=https://celt.ucc.ie/published/E900007-002/text001.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608192929/https://celt.ucc.ie/published/E900007-002/text001.html |archive-date=8 June 2021 |access-date=2021-06-08 |website=celt.ucc.ie}}</ref>

As Pearse parleyed with the British for terms at the end of [[Easter Rising|Easter week, 1916]], his Dublin commander [[James Connolly]] is recalled lying wounded in a house in [[Moore Street]] with a portrait of Emmet hanging over his bed.<ref name=":42">{{Cite book |last=Edwards |first=Ruth Dudley |title=Patrick Pearse, The Triumph of Failure |publisher=Poolbeg |year=1990 |isbn=9781853710681 |location=Swords, Co. Dublin |pages=307}}</ref>