Thomas McCabe (United Irishmen)

A native of Belfast and member of the First Presbyterian Church, McCabe owned a cotton mill[1] and a clock making shop[2] in the city. Along with other future United men, such as Henry Haslett and William Tennant, he was a Freemason and a member of Lodge 684.[3] He married Jean Woolsey, daughter of John Woolsey, a merchant of Portadown and together they had four children.[4] Their third child was William Putnam McCabe,a fellow Freemason,[5] who would also join the United Irishmen, and was important in organising Ulster prior to the 1798 Rebellion.[6] Jean died in 1790.

Thomas was one of the founding members of the Belfast Charitable Society, Clifton House, Belfast in 1774. In the 1770s, McCabe and John McCracken (father of United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken) installed machinery in the Clifton House, known then as Belfast Poor House, enabling it to become the first cotton spinning mill in the town. An important member of Belfast's mercantile and industrial middle class, he donated £100 to the building of a new White Linen Hall in 1782, to act as a centre for the bustling linen industry in the city. Another important benefactor to the building of the hall, was fellow future United Irishman, Gilbert McIlveen.[7]

Prior to the founding of the United Irishmen, McCabe was heavily involved in Belfast's liberal and radical community, being a leading figure in the city's anti-slavery circle. He clashed routinely with the plans of Waddell Cunningham and others to form a Belfast-based slave trading company of which he wrote, ‘May God eternally damn the soul of the man who subscribes the first guinea’.[8] In 1786, he prevented a slave-owning shipping company from setting up business in Belfast. These exploits led Theobald Wolfe Tone to style him as the 'Irish Slave'.[9]

The United Irishmen were initially founded as a group of liberal Protestant and Presbyterian men interested in promoting Parliamentary reform, and later became a revolutionary movement influenced by the ideas of Thomas Paine and his book ‘The Rights of Man’. In 1791 Wolfe Tone published the pamphlet ‘Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland’ where he set out that religious division was being used to balance “the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both.” He put forward the case for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

This pamphlet was read by McCabe and a group of eight other prominent Belfast Presbyterians interested in reforming Irish Parliament. They invited Tone and his friend Thomas Russell to Belfast where the group met on October 14, 1791. It was there that the Belfast Society of the United Irishmen was formed, with McCabe as a founding member.

In March 1798, most of the leadership of the Leinster branch of the Society were meeting at the house of Oliver Bond in Dublin, when they were arrested. This crippled the organisation. Many of its leaders, such as Russell and Thomas Addis Emmet were already in prison, while others like Tone and Arthur O'Connor were in Europe. Meanwhile, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was in hiding, with a government net closing around him.

Nonetheless, in May, the rising finally began. First in Kildare, it spread to other counties in Leinster before finally consuming Ulster. The meetings to plan the attack on Antrim were held in McCabe's house. During and after the insurrection, his shop in North St was repeatedly attacked by government troops.[10] His son, William, acted as bodyguard to Lord Edward before his capture, and escaped to France after the revolution. At the age of 59, Thomas would have been too old to fight. Although still highly involved in the organisation during the insurrection, he appears to have been unmolested by the authorities in the aftermath. William later was involved in the uprising of Robert Emmet in 1803.

Thomas is buried in Clifton Street Cemetery along with other prominent United men such as Henry Joy McCracken, William Drennan, William Steel Dickson, the Sinclair brothers.[11]

A Blue Plaque to Thomas and his son, William, was erected by the Ulster History Circle on the wall of St.Malachy's College, Antrim Road, Belfast, which was built on the site of the McCabe home.[12]

• Marianne Elliott 2012, Wolfe Tone Second edition, Liverpool University Press
• John McCabe 1999, A United Irish Family: The McCabes of Belfast (Part III), 'North Irish Roots' Vol. 10, No. 1 (1999), pp. 33–35
• Northern Ireland.org, Hidden Connections: The Abolitionist Movement in Ireland, (http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article/103/hidden-connections-the-abolitionist-movement-in-ireland)
• Kenneth L. Dawson 2003, Moment of unity - Irish rebels and Freemasons, 'Irish News', May 10, 2003
• Raymond O'Regan & Arthur Magee 2014, 'The Little Book of Belfast', The History Press
• Raymond O'Regan 2004, The history of Belfast's Exchange & Assembly Rooms, 'Your Place & Mine', June 2004.
• Kenneth Leslie Dawson 2004, McCabe, William Putnam (c. 1776-1821), Irish nationalist and cotton manufacturer, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography