[Broadside, caption title]: Playing Up the Puritan

First edition. Broadside. Single sheet measuring 6" x 11" printed on recto only. Lightly creased where once folded with a few short, nicked tears; a very good copy. Scholar Michael Doorley states, "The Friends of Irish Freedom was founded a few weeks prior to the 1916 Rising, ostensibly to promote the cause of Ireland in the United States." [see Doorley, 'Irish-American Diaspora Nationalism: the Friends of Irish Freedom' (publisher's abstract, Four Courts, 2005)]. In their first constitution, the Friends of Irish Freedom pledged themselves "to encourage and assist any movement that will tend to bring about the national independence of Ireland." It was founded in 1916, at the First Irish Race Convention, in New York City, at the Hotel Astor. Clan na Gael played a key role in the foundation, with close ties to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was generally considered their counterpart in Ireland. [header states: "Released for immediate publication"; published on occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the landing of the pilgrims in the United States]. The text of the broadside begins: "The Puritan was not what one would call a very lovable person, but we are going to hear a lot about him for the next few weeks They had come from the other side of the world to secure for themselves the blessings of religious liberty, but they proved in their new home as intolerant to the religious opinions of others as ever Laud had been to theirs. Stern almost to savageness in the laws they passed These are the people who we may be expect to hear played up as being the apostles of religious liberty It has been humorously said that the Puritans first fell upon their knees and then on the aborigines; but they did more than that, they fell upon all who differed with them in religionThe true founders of religious liberty in what is now the United States were the Catholic settlers of Maryland". Scarce. *OCLC* locates a single holding [Oberlin]. The National Library of Ireland notes holdings of various other broadsides and pamphlets published by The Friends of Irish Freedom, but not this title.…