Patrick Egan (land reformer and diplomat)

Patrick Egan (August 31 1841 – 1919) was an Irish and American political leader.

Egan was born in Ballymahon, Co. Longford, Ireland. His family later moved to Dublin and at the age of fourteen he entered the office of an extensive grain and milling firm, the North City Milling Company, in Dublin, and before he was twenty had been promoted to the post of chief bookkeeper and confidential man. Later he was elected managing director of this, as a stock company, it being the most extensive one in Ireland. He was, at the same time, senior partner in the most extensive bakery establishment in the county. He had been an industrious learner before going into business, and all this time took evening lessons of various instructors, and particularly of a brilliant young Episcopal minister of Dublin named Porte. [ [http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Lancaster/1889/Chapters/20.htm 1889 HISTORY OF LINCOLN NEBRASKA - Chapter Twenty ] at www.memoriallibrary.com]

Egan became involved with the Irish Republican Brotherhood soon after its establishment. He and others (including John O'Connor Power, Joseph Biggar and John Barry) resigned from the Irish Republican Brotherhood in August 1877 over the condemnation by its leaders of the use of politics within a revolutionary organisation.

In 1873, Egan was treasurer of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and with the IRB's supported, participated in the establishment of the Home Rule League with fellow IRB Supreme Council members John O'Connor Power, Joseph Biggar and John Barry.

At its foundation in 1879, he was elected treasurer of the Irish Land League. He was a close associate of Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell. At the end of 1880, he, with twelve others, including Parnell, Dillon, Bigger, Sexton, Sullivan, Sheridan, and Matt Harris, were singled out by the government for prosecution for alleged conspiracy. After a costly trial of sixteen days the jury stood ten for acquittal and two for conviction. The government did not dare arraign them again, but brought in a bill to suspend the habeas corpus act, and to permit the arrest of any one obnoxious to the government, intending to proscribe all members of the league.

Following the arrest of Parnell, in his function as Treasurer of the Land League he signed the No Rent Manifesto of 18 October 1881. This led to proscription of the League by the British government. This led Egan to flee to Paris with the organisation's funds in order to prevent their confiscation by the authorities. [ [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=3106139 The Life of Henry George ] at www.questia.com] He remained in Paris from February 1881 to the end of 1882. [ [http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Lancaster/1889/Chapters/20.htm 1889 HISTORY OF LINCOLN NEBRASKA - Chapter Twenty ] at www.memoriallibrary.com]

Between 1880 to 1882, Egan was nominated a number of times for election to parliament, and was twice unanimously nominated, once for Queen's County and again for Meath, but he declined because he could not take the oath of allegiance to England required by the government. [ [http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Lancaster/1889/Chapters/20.htm 1889 HISTORY OF LINCOLN NEBRASKA - Chapter Twenty ] at www.memoriallibrary.com]

Learning that the government was conspiring to arrest him and colleagues, and make him the victim of a pretended trial, he quietly fled to Holland, and later fled to the United States, settling in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he continued to work strenuously for the Irish Land League and Irish home rule. In 1881 he was elected, at its convention in Boston, president of the National Executive Committee of the Irish National League of America. [ [http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/FENIANS/2005-12/1135354513 RootsWeb: FENIANS-L Re: (Fwd: 1884 Irish National League of America) ] at archiver.rootsweb.com] [ [http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Lancaster/1889/Chapters/20.htm 1889 HISTORY OF LINCOLN NEBRASKA - Chapter Twenty ] at www.memoriallibrary.com]

Egan was instrumental in exposing the Piggott forgeries. [ [http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Lancaster/1889/Chapters/20.htm 1889 HISTORY OF LINCOLN NEBRASKA - Chapter Twenty ] at www.memoriallibrary.com]

He subsequently became involved in American politics and was a minor power in the Republican Party until he deserted it for William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic Party in 1896.

As United States Minister to Chile (1889–93), he ably represented the United States when relations were strained during the revolt against President José Manuel Balmaceda. He caused the Baltimore Crisis, an attempt of the USA to occupy the rich territories of north Chile. The general Chilean attitude was probably best expressed by eduardo Phillips, Chief of the Diplomatic Section of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, who described Egan in a letter to one of the newspapers as a person "utterly lacking in all elements of culture and courtesy, and ever-ready to descend to the level of invective and calumny". ["Chile and the United States, 1880-1962, The Emergence of Chile's Social Crisis and the Challenge to United States Diplomacy", Frederik B. Pike, University of Notre Dame Press, 1963, page 81]

Egan supported John Redmond and the Irish Volunteers in his final years. [ [http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/e/Egan,Patrick/life.htm Patrick Egan ] at www.pgil-eirdata.org]

Egan was the father of fourteen children, nine of whom survived childhood. His residence in Lincoln was located at 1447 Q street.

References

* cite journal | first = Joyce S. | last = Goldberg | title = Patrick Egan: Irish-American minister to Chile, 1889-93 | journal = Éire-Ireland | volume = 14 | issue = 3 | date = 1979 | pages = pp. 83–95 | id = ISSN|0013-2683, ISSN|1550-5162 (electronic), oclc|55223988

succession box
title = United States Minister to Chile
before = William R. Roberts
after = James D. Porter
years = 9 August 1889–4 July 1893