John Boyle O'Reilly, the favourite poet of John F. Kennedy, was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who, as a member of the British Army, recruited 80 fellow soldiers to participate in the impending Fenian Rising. He was arrested and sentenced to death on the eve of 1/3

2/3 his 22nd birthday, but had the sentence commuted to penal servitude for 20 years. He escaped Australia to America with the held of Father Patrick McCabe, where he was greeted by large crowds in Philadelphia. He became a journalist and was key to the Catalpa rescue of 1876.

The Crisis (newspaper of the NAACP) in 1945:

"O'Reilly defended the oppressed negroes, as he had defended the oppressed Indians, as sincerely and zealously as he had all his life defended the oppressed of his own race. It was morally impossible for him to do otherwise."